Evaluating Explanation For Forgetting

Question 1

Research is quite artificial:

Answer 1

These experiments are lab-based and often use artificial word lists which don’t reflect how we remember things in our daily lives and thus lack external validity

Question 2

Interference only explains some situations of forgetting:

Anderson (2000)

Answer 2

Interference effects don’t occur that often and that the 2 memories need to be quite similar for interfering to occur. Anderson concluded that how much we forget due to interference remains unclear

Question 3

Individual differences:

Kane and Engle (2000)

Answer 3

showed that people with a greater working memory span are less susceptible to proactive interference. Participants were given word lists to remember and those with low WMs showed greater proactive interference