Ebbinghaus found that memory of information tends to decay at a rate that depends on how often that memory is refreshed. The initial decay rate is reduced by a refresh.
So if Erik's first trip to Italy refreshed his knowledge of Italian, he could expect that it would take longer for that knowledge to decay to the same level it had reached at the time of the first trip. That is, Erik might reasonably observe that it would be "years later" before his memory was as bad as he found it to be on the first trip.
Scenario B matches Ebbinghaus's forgetting theory.
