Interference

• Interference is an explanation for forgetting

  forgetting occurs because memory stored at different times in the long-term memory, disrupt each other
• proactive interference - older memory, interferes with new memory

  Your old phone number makes it difficult to learn a new one
• retroactive interference - new memory, interferes with an older memory

  Your new address makes it harder to remember your old address
• study- mcgeoch and mcdonalds

  interference is worse when memory is similar

  Procedure

  Participants had to learn a list of 10 words until they had 100% accuracy six groups

  each group learned a different new list of words

  Group 1 learnt synonyms, and when tested on original list after learning the new list, they had the worst recall
• explanations of similarity effects

  Proactive - old memory makes new similar information hard to store

  Retroactive - new memory makes older similar information hard to recall
• a strength is that there is evidence of interference effect in every day situations

  psychologists asked rugby players to recall the names of teams. The players all played for the same time interval, but the number of intervening games varied due to missed matches from to injury.

  Players who played the most games so had most interference for memory, had the poorest recall.
• A counterpoint to evidence for real world interference

  Interference forgetting in every day situations is unusual this is because the conditions necessary for interference to occur relatively rare.

  In lab studies, there is a high degree of control, which means researchers can create ideal conditions for interference.

  this suggests that most forgetting may be better explained by other theories such as retrieval failure, due to lack of cues
• A limitation is that interference is temporary and can be overcome by using cues

  tulving gave participants lists of words organised into categories, 1 list at a time

  Recall averaged about 70% for the first list, but became progressively worse as participants learned each new list

  At the end of the procedure, the participants were given a cued recall test, they were told the names of the categories recall rose again to about 70%

  This shows that interference only causes a temporary loss of accessibility to material
• another strength is the support from drug studies

  participants were given a list of words, and later asked to recall the list

  They found that when a list of words was learned under the influence of the drug diazepam, recall one week later was poor

  when the list was learned before the drug was taken later recall was better, suggesting that drug stopped new information being remembered, so it can’t interfere

  The findings show that forgetting can be due to interference. when you reduce interference, you reduce the forgetting