Flashcards
Memory Interference
Cards in this deck (11)
- 1What is the interference theory?Theory regarding human memory. Interference occurs in learning when there is an interaction between the new material and transfer effects of past learned material, memories or thoughts that have a negative influence in comprehending new material.
- 2How is interference theory tested?Participants are initially presented with several word-pairs (e.g. cat-tree, candle-table.) The first word in each pair (e.g. cat or candle) is known as the stimulus term and the second word (e.g. tree or table) is known as the response term. Learning continues until participants can recall each response term when presented with the stimulus term. The participants then learn a second list of paired associates.
- 3Describe what proactive interference is and how it is related to the interference theory experimentPast experience interferes with current recall. Participants recall is tested for the second list of paired associates. Performance of the experimental group (who learned both lists) is compared with a control group ( who learned only the first list.) Proactive interference should mean that the experimental group does less well than the control group.
- 4Describe what retroactive interference is and how it is related to the interference theory experimentSubsequent experience interferes with recall of past material learned. Participants recall is tested on the first list of paired associates. Performance of the experimental group (who learned both lists) is compared with the control group (who learned only the first list.) Retroactive interference should mean that the experimental group does less well than the control group.
- 5Provide an example of proactive interferenceYou usually park your car in the same place everyday but one day you are late and your space is taken so you must park elsewhere. At the end of the day you will look for your car in the place you usually park instead of where it is actually parked because old experience is dominating new recall.
- 6Provide an example of retroactive interference.Recently you have moved house. You have been asked to fill in a form that asks for any of your addresses over the past 3 years. You write down the postcode of your new house and have forgotten the postcode for your previous residence because new experience is affecting old recall.
- 7Evaluate the interference theory:( Unlikely that interference theory has much applicability to everyday life
:( Most research conducted on interference theory done in lab so lacks ecological validity
:( Memories tend not to be compressed as occurs in artificially designed experiments to test interference
:) Can occasionally happen in real life e.g. phone number or PIN - 8Henk Schmidt(2000) researched into the interference theory, what was his procedure?Random selection of 700 participants from a database of 1700 names. 211 respondents took part, aged from 11-79 years old. Each was given a map of the Molenberg area where the school was. They were asked to recall the street names- these had been replaced with numbers.
- 9What other data was collected in the Henk Schmidt experiment into the interference theory and what for?How many times they had moved house, where they lived, how long they had lived there. To measure the amount of retroactive interference by the number of times an individual had moved to other cities/neighborhoods (thus having to learn new street names.) This measurement varied: 25% of participants had never moved, 1 participant had moved 40 times.
- 10What were the results of Henk Schmidt's experiment into the interference theory?There was a positive association between the number of times that participants had moved outside the Molenberg area and the number of street names forgotten.
- 11What conclusion did Henk Schmidt draw from his research into the interference theory?Retroactive interference appears to be able to explain forgetting in some real-life situations. Learning new patterns of street names when moving house makes recalling an older pattern of street names harder to do
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- A-Level Pyschology Flashcards on Memory Interference, created by chloemockri12 on 29/10/2015.
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