Explaination Of Forgetting - Interference Flashcards
What are the types of interference and what do they mean
Proactive interference
Old info interfering with the new
Retroactive interference
New info interfering with the old
What does this theory suggest
That information, especially info that’s similar get “muddled up” in our LTM and this makes it harder for us to locate memories and then we experience “forgetting”
Study for proactive interference
A psychologist asked some students to learn a list of nonsense syllables and in 24 hours he asked them to recall them, he found that recall was a lot lower than expected.
The students were asked to learn anymore syllables in them 24 hours, therefore he knew it wasn’t a case of retroactive interference as there was no new information to interfere with the old.
Upon further research he found out that the students had already participated in a memory test, and the students gave the nonsense syllables from the first memory test.
This is an example of proactive interference because the old nonsense syllables got in the way of the new nonsense syllables.
Study for retroactive interference
Psychologists asked participants to learn a list of 10 words, until they could remember them with 100% accuracy. They were then put into 1 of 6 groups where they were given a new list of words to learnt:
1. New words with the same meanings to the original words
2. New words with opposite meanings to the original words
3.new words that were unrelated to the original words
4.constant syllables
5. 3 digit numbers
6. No new list
They were then asked to recall them original list and results showed that those who were given the numbers recalled the original list better then the group who had words with the same meanings. This shows that we are more likely to get muddled up with things with similar meanings
Strength evaluation
P- real world situations
E- a psychologist asked rugby players to recall all the teams they had played against that season, the rugby players all didn’t play the same amount of games due to factors such as ingury. Results showed that those who played the most games (the most interference) had the worst recall
E- shows that interference operates in day to day tasks which increases the validity of the theory
P- lab experiemnt
E- control EVs, such as task environment, remove distractions and control rehearsal time
E- establish cause and effect relationships, increasing internal validity
HOWVER, we loose external validity due to it being naturalistic and having mundane realism
P- supporting research from drug studies
E- a psychologist give particpants a list if words to recall, a group of participants an anxiety drug that decreased brain activity, and a control group was given a placebo. Results showed that those who were given the drug, had reduced interference between learning and recall in comparison to the control group
E- shows that forgetting is due to interference
Limitaion evaluation
P- interference can be overcome using cues
E- a psychologist gave particpants a lists of words of organised words that were put into categories (but not told what they were). Recall of the first list was 70%, however this fell with each new list, but when the particpant was given the name of the category (cue) recall rose again back to 70%
E- interference just causes temporary memory loss and not forgetting which is what this theory suggested
