interference forgetting

• what is interference theory if forgetting

  memories become 'mixed up' and confused with other memories, especially if they are similar
• what was interference proposed as

  mainly as an explantion of forgetting in LTM
• what are the 2 types of interference

  • proactive and retro-active
• what is proactive forgetting

  when old infomation interferes with new infomation and cause forgetting of the new infomation
• what is an example of proactive forgetting

  i remember my old phone number but have forgotten my new number
• what is retroactive

  where new infomation interferes with old infomation and causes forgetting of old infomation
• what is an example of retroactive forgetting

  i remember my new candidate number but have forgotten my old one
• who carried out a study interference forgetting

  a study was carried out by baddeley and hitch (1977)
• what did baddeley and hitch's study have

  high ecological validity
• what is the aim of baddeley and hitch's study

  to compare inference and decay explanations for forgetting
• what was the method of baddeley and hitch's study

  • rugby players were asked to recall names of teams they had played earlier in the year
  • one group of players had played in all of the games
  • the second groups had played in some of the early games, missed some in the middle and then played some later games
  • both groups were asked to recall the names of the teams they had played
• what were the results of baddeley and hitch's study

  the result showed that the players who were injured for part of the season and has missed some games could remember more compared to those players who has played throughout the whole of the season
• what is the conclusion of the baddeley and hitch's study

  how long ago games were played was not relevant, the number of games played was found to be impacting on memory and causing interference and therefore resulting in memory
• what is one strength of interference (real life studies)

  P - a strength is that real life studies have supported the interference explanation

  E - Baddeley asked rugby player to recall the names of the teams they has played against thoughtout the season, some has played all matches whereas other has missed some due to injury

  E -accurate recall was not affected by how long ago the match took place, but more important was the number of games played by those doing the recall. Those who had played fewer games had less interference than players who had played all the games

  L - this shows that interference explanation can be applied to at least some everyday situations, and are a good explanation of forgetting
• what is a limitation of interference (artificial material)

  P - a limitation is that some of the studies that support the interference explanation of forgetting use artificial material

  E- in some studies, the material used to test interference are not realistic, they consist of word lists which we are unlikely to remember in every day life

  E - for example in everyday life we remember things such as how to get to work and the names if the people we meet

  L - this means some lab studies on interference do not reflect everyday forgetting
• what is a limitation of interference ( cues )

  P - a limitation is that interference effects may be overcome using cues

  E - some studies have given ps lists of words to recall where there were categories such as fruits and animals

  E - recall was high for the first list at 70%, this reduced for further lists, presumably because of interference. However when given a cue (name of category) recall rose again

  L - the memories of the word were stored in LTM but interference prevented access to them, when given a cue, it was easier to access forgotten words