Anyone who's tried hard to remember something knows that repetition helps. The more times you retrieve a memory, the longer you will remember it.
The problem is that every time we retrieve a memory, we might forget, add, or slightly change small parts of it. Apparently, the next time we recall the information we remember what we remembered incorrectly. This is similar to the game of "telephone" we played as kids, where a message is passed from person to person via whisper. When the last person indicates what he or she heard, it is usually much different than what was first communicated (the cumulative effect of small changes made as the message is relayed from person to person).
One theory is that our brain has an access problem. Each time we remember something, our brain creates a new item similar to the first and stores it up front. When we go to grab that memory again, we grab the one that's easiest to access (the most recent version).
The other theory is that our brain has a storage problem. Every time we access a memory, we might lose part of it and/or alter it slightly.
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