Evaluation

• Real-world interference

  
  

  Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch (1977) asked rugby players to recall the names of the teams they had played against during a rugby season. The players all played for the same time interval but the number of intervening games varied because some players missed matches due to injury. Players who played the most games (most interference for memory) had the poorest recall. This shows that interference can operate in at least some real-world situations, increasing the validity of the theory.
• Interference and cues

  
  

  Endel Tulving and Joseph Psotka's 1971 study revealed that participants experienced interference when presented with lists of categorized words successively, leading to a decline in recall for each subsequent list. However, a cued recall test at the end, where participants were provided with category names, demonstrated that the information was still stored in long-term memory, challenging interference theory by suggesting a temporary loss of accessibility rather than permanent disappearance.
• Counterpoint to real-world interference

  Interference may cause forgetting in daily life, but it's rare due to the specific conditions needed. Lab studies allow researchers to create ideal conditions for interference, unlike everyday situations (e.g. revising similar subjects close to each other). Forgetting is often better explained by theories like retrieval failure due to a lack of cues.
• Support from drug studies

  One strength comes from evidence of retrograde facilitation:

  • Evidence from Anton Coenen and Gilles van Luijtelaar (1997).
  • Participants given diazepam before learning a word list showed poorer recall a week later (compared to the placebo group), but better if they learned before taking the drug.
  • John Wixted (2004) theorizes that the drug blocks new information from interfering with previously stored memories.
  • This implies reducing interference can decrease forgetting.