Interference

• What is interference?

  When forgetting occurs as one memory interferes or blocks another
• What does interference explain?

  forgetting in LTM
• Two types of interference?

  proactive and retrospective
• Proactive interference

  Where older memories interfere with an attempt to reach newer memories
• Retroactive interference

  Where newer memories interfere with with older memories
• Example of proactive interference

  Dialling old phone number when trying to remember new number
• Example of retroactive interference

  Trying to remember old postcode but remembering the new instead
• What did McGeoch and McDonald find?

  Studies retroactive interference

  Asked PTPS to remember words and given multiple lists with varying levels of similarity

  found words more similar is where interference is strongest
• What did Schmidt find?

  Retrospective interference

  Selected high school students and asked them name street names and compared that to the number of times they moved house

  Found positive correlation

  Newer memories interfere with older ones
• What did Tulving and Psotka find?

  lists of 24 words organised into 6 categories

  Recall started at 70% then got worse when added more lists

  When given cues they remembered more