Interference

• Many of the experiments are lab based which lack ecological validity.
• Support from McGeoch & McDonald (1931) who found that interference is worse for similar memories.
• Baddeley & Hitch (1977) support interference in a real life setting using rugby players.
• Underwood (1957) showed proactive interference in that the more lists participants learn, the worse their overall recall.
• Muller & Pilzecker (1900) showed when participants were given a list of nonsense syllables, followed by a task, their recall is decreased.
• Interference in everyday life does not occur that often as two memories need to be quite similar for forgetting to occur.
• Danaher et al (2008) found that both recall and recognition of an advertiser’s message were impaired when participants were exposed to two advertisements for competing brands within a week.
• Evidence for individual differences; some people are less affected by proactive interference than others.
• Researchers have questioned if interference causes a memory to disappear or if these effects are just temporary.
• Ceraso (1967) found that interference occurs because memories are temporarily not accessible rather than forgotten.
• Tulving & Psotka (1971) also supports retroactive interference in that forgetting is more of an accessibility issue.
• Keppal & Underwood (1962) found that participants typically remembered trigrams that were presented first, suggesting proactive interference occurred.
• Other theories of forgetting may better explain why people forget, like cue dependency.
• Coenen & van Luijtelaar (1997) suggest that if you reduce interference, you reduce forgetting.