Psych: Interference

• RETROACTIVE INTERFERENCE


  New things interfering with old things
• PROACTIVE INTERFERENCE


  Old things interfering with new things
• Similarity of test materials can cause interference
• McGeoch and McDonald studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarity between two sets of materials


  1931
• Procedure in McGeoch and McDonald study


  1. Participants had to learn a list of 10 words until they could remember them 100%

  2. Participants then had to learn a new list

  3. There were 6 groups
• Types of word lists used in McGeoch and McDonald study


  • Words with same meaning
  • Words with opposite meaning
  • Words unrelated to original
  • Nonsense syllables
  • 3 digit numbers
  • No new list
• The most similar material produced the worst recall in the McGeocn and McDonald study
• Interference is strongest when memories are similar
• Interference may only be temporary
• Tulving and Potska gave participants 6 lists of 24 words, each list organised into categories


  1971
• Recall was about 70% for the first list


  This fell as they were given each new list to learn due to retroactive interference
• At the end, they were given a category name


  Recall moved to 70% again
• Baddeley and Hitch asked rugby players to try to remember the names of the teams they had played so far


  1977
• The accuracy of recall did not depend on how long ago the matches took place, but much more on the number of games they played in the meantime
• this study demonstrates the effect of interference in everyday life
• The artificial stimuli used in these tasks, such as learning lists of random words with no personal meaning to the participants, means that the findings of interference studies are likely to have low mundane realism
• In real life, we are likely to learn lists of meaningful information, such as revision topics for psychology, which we draw links upon and also which have personal meaning to us
• These factors may also influence the extent of forgetting, rather than influence
• Interference has been consistently demonstrated in several studies, but particularly in lab experiments
• The use of highly-controlled conditions in lab experiments, standardised instructions alongside the removal of the biasing effects of extraneous and confounding variables increases the validity of the theory