Interference

• Interference - information that is similar in format gets in the way of the information someone is trying to recall.
• There are two types of interference: retroactive, proactive
• Retroactive interference - more recent information gets in the way of trying to recall older information.
• Proactive interference - old information prevents the recall of newer information.
• Interference McGeoch and McDonald (1931) studied what effect a second activity (list 2) has on the accuracy of a first memory (list 1).
• McGeoch and McDonald (1931) had 12 ppts learn a list of 10 words until they could remember them with 100% accuracy.

  They were then shown a new list, one of 5 types

  1. Synonyms of old list
  2. antonyms of old list
  3. unrelated words compared to old list
  4. nonsense syllables
  5. 3 digit numbers
  6. control - not given a list
• McGeoch and McDonald (1931) interference results - the more similar the second list was, the more difficult it was to remember the first list. This shows retroactive interference.
• Retroactive interference study: Muller -

  ppts were given a list of syllables to learn to remember for a few minutes and after a retention interval, he asked ppts recall. Performance was worse if they had an intervening task between learning and recall. Intervening produces RI because the task interfered what had previously been learnt.
• Proactive interference study: underwood - investigated by PI by analysing studies he found where ppts had to learn and recall a list of words and learnt the words earlier on better than the words at the end of the sequence.
• Interference AO3. The research is artificial. There is lots of evidence supporting proactive and retroactive interference however most of this research was conducted in a lab and used artificial words and random syllables. These findings may not relate to every day memory. Ppts may lack motivation to remember the words.
• Interference AO3. Interference only explains some situations for forgetting. Even if interference effects occur in real life, they dont occur that often. Special conditions are needed for interference to lead to forgetting. Two memories need to be similar. This is why interference is considered to be relatively unimportant for everyday forgetting.
• Interference AO3. Researchers have questions whether interference is actually memory disappearing or just temporary. Ceraso (1967) found that if memory was tested again after 24 hours, recognition (accessibility) showed considerable spontaneous recovery whereas recall (availability) remained the same. This suggests that interference occurs when memories are temporarily not accessible rather than being unavailable.