Explanations for forgetting: Interference

Explanations for forgetting: Interference

1. Retroactive inteference

   • where learning something new interferes with past learning
   • Muller & Pilzecker (1990)
     • gave participants list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 mins & then after a retention interval asking participants to recall the lists
     • performance less good when participants had an intervening task between learning and recall

2. Proactive Interference

   • past learning interferes with attempts to learn something new
   • Underwood (1957)
     • analysed findings from a no. of studies & found participants were less able to learn a list of words later in sequence, compared to those presented first
     • if participants had to memorise ten or more lists of words after 24 hours recall was 20%, but if only memorised one word list recall was 70%

3. Evaluation

   • artificial tasks
     • most of research investigating interference is lab based & uses artificial list of words and/or nonsense syllables
     • Therefore findings may not relate to everyday uses of memory, which tend not to involve simple world lists
     • suggests that the results of interference research lack ecological & may not apply to everyday examples of human memory
   • Interference is only part explanation
     • critics argue that while interference effects do occur in everyday life, they do not occur very often
     • e.g. rather special special conditions are required for interference to lead to forgetting - the two memories need to be quite similar
     • this suggests that interference is a relatively unimportant explanation of everyday is forgetting and other theories are required to provide a complete explanation
   • interference affects accessibility or availability
     • Ceraso (1967) if memory was tested again after 24 hours, recognition (accessibility) showed considerable spontaneous recovery whereas recall (availability) remained the same
     • shows interference effects do not cause memories to disappear and the effects are only temporary
     • suggests that interference only occurs because memories are temporarily not accessible rather than lost (unavailable)
   • application to advertising
     • Danaher et al (2008) both recall & recognition of an advertisers message were impaired when participants were exposed to two advertisements for competing brands in the same week
     • this demonstrates the effects of interference when people are exposed to multiple competing adverts
     • matters because research can potentially save advertisers money & enhance the effectiveness of advertising campaigns
   • individual differences
     • Kane & Engle (2000) demonstrated that individuals with greater working memory spans were less susceptible to proactive interference
     • researchers tested this by giving participants three lists of words to learn. those participants with low working memory spans showed greater proactive interference than those with higher working memory
     • suggests interference does not affect everyone equally & individual differences may play an important role in forgetting