Evaluation

• Memories that are formed at different times are likely to have been formed at different times
• Retroactive interference

  When learning a new list of words interferes with the recall of the original list of words
• Retroactive interference experiments


  • McGeoch and McDonald study - participants learned a list of words to 100% accuracy, then learned a new list with similar words, and found decreased performance on recalling the original words
• Proactive interference


  When memories formed earlier interfere with the formation of new memories
• Proactive interference experiments


  • Keppel and Underwood study - participants presented with trigrams (3 consonants) at different time intervals, had to count backwards to prevent rehearsal, and found they could better recall the trigrams presented first, regardless of time interval
• Interference theory only explains one type of forgetting - when the information is similar
• Studies on interference theory used artificial stimuli like trigrams, which are not representative of forgetting in everyday life
• Interference theory lacks ecological validity as an explanation for forgetting in the real world