retention and forgetting. the second issue concerns the meanings of two terms common to any discussion about memory. these terms, retention and forgetting, are closely related. in fact, it could be said that they are opposites. retention refers to what we remember while forgetting refers to what we do not remember. however, a potential problem exists when we use the term can mean two different things. when we say that something has been "forgotten," we indicate that we cannot remember something. but , in terms of relating this statement to human memory function. it can mean that the information either is not in memory or is in memory but unretrievable at the moment.