Explanations for forgetting- interference

Explanations for forgetting- interference

1. Retroactive interference

   • Georg Muller and his student were first to identify radioactive interference
     • Gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes- after retention interval, asked participants to recall the lists
       • Performance was of a lower standard if participants had been given an intervening task between initial learning and recall
         • Intervening task produced Retroactive interference- later task interfered with what had previously been learned

2. Proactive interference

   • Benton Underwood (1957)- showed proactive interference could be equally significant
     • Analysed findings from a number of studies- concluded that when participants have to learn a series of word lists they do not learn the lists of words encountered later on in the sequence as well as the lists of words encountered early on
       • Findings: participants memorised 10 or more lists, then after 24 hours, remembered about 20% of what they had learned
         • If they only learned 1 list- recall was over 70%

3. Similarity of test materials

   • McGeoch and McDonald (1931)- experimented with effects of similarity of materials
     • Gave participants a list of 10 adjectives (list A)- after list A being learned there was a resting interval of 10 minutes (learned list B) followed by recall
       • If list B= synonyms of list A- recall was poor (12%)
         • If list B= nonsense sayllables- less effect (26% recall)
           • If list B=numbers- least affect (37% recall)
             • Interference is strongest when items are more similar

4. A Real-world study

   • Baddeley and Hitch (1977)- investigated interference effects in an everday setting of rugby players- recall of names of teams they had played against
     • Some players played in all games of the season- others did not (injury)
       • Time interval from start to end for all players= the same- but number of intervening games was different for each player as some missed somegames
         • If decay theory is correct- all players should recall a similar percentage of games played- time alone should cause forgetting
           • If interference theory= correct- players who played most games shpould forget proportionately more because of interfernence (found by Baddley and Hitch - demonstrates effect of interference in everday life

5. Evaluation

   • Research is quite artificial
     • Issue= most of the research is lab-based- often used rather artificial lists of words and/or nonsense syllables
       • Findings may not relate to everyday life/ everyday use of memory (doesn't usually involve word lists)
         • Participants may lack motivation to remember links in studies- may alow interference effects to appear stronger than they really are
           • Research= low ecological validity
             • Counterargument= interference effedts have been observed in everyday situations
   • Interference only explains some situations of forgetting
     • Interference effects DO occur in everyday life- issue is that they do NOT occur very often
       • Special conditions require for interference to lead to forgetting- two memories need to be quite similar
         • Reason why interference is seen to be quite an unimportant explanation for everyday forgetting
           • Anderson (2000)- no doubt interference plays a role in forgetting- but how much forgetting can be attributed to interference= unclear
   • Accessibility VS availability
     • Researchers questioned if interference effects actually cause memory to disappear or if interference effects are temporary