Forgetting - psychologists

• McGeoch and McDonald


  • tested retroactive interference by changing amount of similarities between two sets of material
  • when participants were asked to recall the original set of words, the most similar material produced the worst recall
  • this shows that interference is strongest when memories are similar
• Baddeley and Hitch


  • asked rugby players to try and remember names of teams they had played so far in the season
  • accurate recall did not depend on how long ago the matches took place
  • more importantly was the number of matches they played in the meantime - retroactive interference
• Tulving and Psotka


  • gave participants five lists of words divided into six categories
  • recall was 70% for first word list given but it fell as additional lists were given
  • at the end they were given a cued recall test (told the names of the categories), recall rose to 70% again
• Encoding Specificity Principle - Tulving


  • A cue present at the time of encoding will help us recall the memory
  • Some cues link to the material in a meaningful way
  • Other cues are not meaningful but just happen to be encoded at the time of learning