forgeting- interference

• ao1:

  one explanation for forgetting is interference which occurs when the recall of one memory blocks another causing forgetting or distorted perceptions on memory. Interference can be retroactive new memories block the recollection of old memories ) or proactive (old memories blocking the new memories). Proactive interference was studied by underwood who found that if participants memorised 10 or more lists after 24h they remembered about 20% of what they learnt. If they only learned one list recall was over 70%.
• paragraph 2

  retroactive interference studied by Schmitt participants were given a map of a local school area with all 48 street names replaced by numbers and were asked to remember as much as possible. They found an association between the amount of times they moved house and the number of street names they remembered. the more they moved the less street names they could remember.
• Ao3:strength: real world study to support interference

  Baddeley and Hitch found that in a group of rugby players who had to recall the names of the teams they played against over a rugby season. The time interval from start to end of the season was the same for a ll players but the number of intervening games was different for each player because of missed games. therefore if interference theory is true them those players who played more games should forget more because of interfece which is what Baddeley and Hitch found.
• strengths: lab experiments

  interference has been demonstrated a lot on lab experiments. This increases the validity of the theory due to the highly controlled conditions of a lab experiment, standardised instructions along with operationalised variables allow the experiment to be more comparable and replicable. Research being a lab experiment is a strength because it gets rid of all the extraneous variables and makes research more reliable
• weakness : research is quite artificial

  because of the artificial stimuli used in these task like the learning random word lists with no meaning to the participants means that the finding of these studies will have low mundane realism. This is because on real life participants are more likely to learn meaningful information which we can link to other information and participants may feel motivated to remember the links in such studies.

  Therefore this shows that research is low in ecological validity
• weakness: interference do occur in evereyday life they dont ouccur that often

  For interference to lead to forgeting the two memories need to be quite similar which shows that interference is an unimportant explanation for everyday forgeting . Anderson (2000) concluded that we dont know how much forgeting can be atributed to interference.

  k-other theories are needed to provide a complete explanation for forgetting