[gugagore]

This seems like it could be true for memories of facts, or something you can recite, like lyrics of a song.

However for other kinds of memories, such as remembering a situation or a picture, I have heard (I'd appreciate a reference) that the recall process of long-term memory is slightly destructive, and that the memory must be re-encoded into long-term memory. That suggests that recalling a memory repeatedly could accelerate it's deterioration.

[markshead]

I've heard something similar, but I think it had to do with the fact that we tend to "fill in the gaps" if we can't remember something about a situation. So we just make up information. I'm not sure if there are ways to combat this by recalling the information before it starts to decay or not, but it has a lot of implications for eyewitness testimonies.

[dredmorbius]

My suspicion is that we create new associations to the old memory. For distinctly visual memories ... I'm not sure what the mechanism is, but at least for myself, I often don't recall specifically what something (or someone) looks like, until I see them again. The act of recall-without-seeing may overwrite the actual recollection with what you think it should be.