I don't know if "forgot" is the right word. No matter how incorrect the pitch inputs were they were very positive, and way in excess of what should be expected at that altitude.
Even with protections out, the airframe itself is very stable - with 20/20 hindsight, the correct response should have been to understand what the turbulence was doing and very gingerly make small corrections once that was understood and a "feel" for the situation was gained. Instead it looks very much like every control input was reactive to each individual bump - possibly resulting in PIO in the lateral axis, but in my opinion there's not enough evidence to say one way or the other.
The main problem is that the response was very instinctive in nature, but not being trained in high-altitude handling the risk was that the response itself was likely to be inappropriate and excessive because the only manual handling the PF was used to was at low altitudes and commeasurately more extreme in terms of sidestick deflection.
As far as I'm concerned though, this is all by the by. The main problem was organisational in nature - Air France operating a type which was known to have potential issues requiring manual handling at cruise level (until fleet-wide repairs were effected), yet nevertheless rostering crews in such a manner that if such an event happened, the flight deck could potentially be manned by a crew without the required experience to recover correctly. That - based on the information we have so far - is the primary reason that control was lost and the aircraft crashed. The details of how that loss of control developed, while useful to understand, are at best a set of contributory factors.