retroactive interference

Cards (2)

  • What is retroactive interference?
    New things that we learn can cause problems when we try to recall old information. E.g., forgetting things from topics you have learnt other things since.
  • What research supports retroactive interference?
    Underwood and Postman (1960) supports retroactive interference. They divided participants into groups and asked the two groups to learn a list of words, after that they only gave one group a second lost of words to learn. When asked to recall the first list of words, group 1 had more accurate recall as they only learnt one list. This supports retroactive interference as the newer information (second list) interfered with the old information (first list).