AO3: Interference

• Thousands of studies in the area

  This means highly controlled experiments give consistent evidence base that interference plays a role in forgetting, therefore there is high reliability for this explanation. For example, Underwood had participants learn word lists and tested them on them 24 hours later. On early lists recall was 80% but later lists fell to 20%. This supports proactive interference as the later lists were forgotten by participants due to early lists interfering with recall. This suggests that under controlled conditions interference does play a role in forgetting.
• However there are issue with lab based research

  In lab conditions, issues lie with motivation for remembering depleting over the course of the experiment and the tasks being artificial and lacking mundane realism. In research, independent groups with small time gaps between conditions are used which don't reflect true interference. Recall fell in Underwood's experiment perhaps due to motivational decline; on early word lists, ppts were more motivated but as it went on, this decreased. Therefore interference may not occur to the same extent in real-life settings, challenging this explanation.
• There is evidence to interference occurring in real-life settings

  This overcomes issues found in Underwood's study relating to motivation and lack of emotion attached because street names hold emotional significance to people, making them less susceptible to forgetting by interference. Schmidt et al found there was a positive association between number of times a person moved house and number of street names they had forgotten. This supports retroactive interference as the new street names interfere with the old. Therefore, even when information holds meaning, interference can still occur.
• Loss of information may only be temporary


  Interference can be overcome by using retrieval cues. This suggests that forgetting doesn't occur because of interference but because of the absence of correct retrieval cues that were present when information was encoded. For example, Tulving and Psotka found that when participants were given retrieval cues the effects of interference disappeared. Participants would remember 70% of words regardless of how many lists were given. This suggests retrieval failure is a more important explanation.