Interference

• The concept of forgetting refers to a persons loss of the ability to recall or recognise something that they have previously learned. This is most likely to occur when the two memories have some similarity
• Retroactive interference is where current attempts to learn something interferes with past learning
• Georg Muller gave ps a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes and then, after a retention interval, asked ps to recall the lists
• Muller found that performance was less good if participants had been given an intervening task between initial learning and recall. The intervening task produced retroactive interference because the later tasks interfered with what had been previously learned
• Proactive interference is where past learning interferes with current attempts to learn something
• Benton underwood carried out a meta analysis and found that when ps have to learn a series of word lists they don’t learn the lists of words encountered later on in the sequence as well as lists of words encountered earlier on
• Overall, underwood found that, if ps memorised 10 or more lists, then, after 24 hours, they remembered about 20% of what they learned. If they only learned one list recall was over 70%
• Ceraso (1967) found that, if memory was tested again after 20 hours, recognition showed considerable spontaneous recovery, whereas recall remained the same. this suggests that interference occurs because memories are temporarily not accessible rather than having actually been lost. the study by Tulving and Psotka, described on the next spread, also supports this finding. this research supports the view that interference affects accessibility rather than availability
• Danaher et al (2008) found that both recall and recognition of an advertiser's message were impaired when participants were exposed to two advertisements for competing brands within a week. they suggest that one strategy might be to enhance the memory trace by running multiple exposures to an advertisement on one day rather than spread these out over a week. this results in reduced interference from competitors' advertisements. this shows how interference research can help advertisers maximise the effectiveness of their campaigns and target their spending most effectively
• Kane and Engle (2000) demonstrated that individuals with a greater working memory span were less susceptible to proactive interference. the researchers tested this by giving ps three words lists to learn. those ps with low working memory spans showed greater proactive interference when recalling the second and third lists than did ps with higher spans. this highlights the role that individual differences play in how people are affected by interference