Explanations For Forgetting Flashcards
What is interference theory
Interference theory suggests that we forget because our long term memories become confused and disrupted by other information while its coded
What are the two types of interference involved in interference theory
Proactive and retroactive interference
What is proactive interference
Proactive interference is when old information disrupts new information. Interference works forwards in time, when old information already stored interferes with something new
What is retroactive interference
Retroactive interference is when new information disrupts old information. Interference works backwards in time, new information being stored interferes with recall of old information.
Give an example of proactive interference
When you rearrange your household items but keep going back to where things used to be
Give an example of retroactive interference
Finding it difficult to remember an old way of completing a maths problem after learning a new technique.
What are the factors that affect the chance of interference in forgetting
Similarities- interference is more likely to occur when two pieces of information are similar this is due to response competition.
Time sensitivity- interference is less likely to occur when there is a large gap between learning the instances.
What did McGeoch and Mcdonald do
They experimented with the effects of similarity of materials. They gave participants a list of 10 adjectives. Once these were learned then there was a resting interval of 10 mins in which they learned list B, followed by recall. If list B was a list of similar words to list a then recall was poor (12 percent) if list b was random syllables this had less effect worth 29 percent recall. This shows that interference is strongest with similar words.
What real world study was conducted by baddely and hitch
Baddely and hitch investigated interference effects in an every day setting of rugby players recalling the names of the teams they had played over a rugby season. Some players played in all of the games and some played in only some of the games because of injuries. The players that played less games remembered more of the teams they had played than those who had played in a lot of the games because of interference.
What is cue dependant forgetting
Cue dependant forgetting is when information is in LTM but forgetting happens due to the absence of appropriate cues/prompts encoded at the sane time
What is an encoding specificity principe
This is the principle about when we learn something, other contextual information is encoded along with it. The retrieval of that memory may rely on the memory of the other contextual information that was encoded a the time of learning. We call these cues.
What are the two types of cue
External and internal cues such as context dependant learning and state dependant learning.
What are context dependant cues
Aspects of the external environment work as cues to memory (sight,sound,smell) so being in different places would inhibit memory as we would lack environmental cues.
In context dependant forgetting, what study did abernerthy do to evaluate it.
Abernerthy arranged for a group of students to be tested prior to a certain course beggining. Some students were tested in their teaching room with the same instructor, some students were tested in the same teaching room with a different instructor
Some students were tested in a different room but with the same instructor
And some students were tested in a different room with a different instructor. Those tested by the same instructor in the same room preformed the best, this is because familiar things and surroundings acted as memory cues.
In context dependant forgetting what study did golden and baddely carry out in support of CDF
They carried out an interesting study of deep sea divers working underwater. In this it’s crucial- a matter of life and death for divers to remember instructions given before diving about their work underwater. In this study divers learned a list of words. Group 1 learn on land and recall on land. Group 2 learn on land and recall underwater
Group 3 learn underwater and recall on land
Group 4 learn underwater and recall underwater.
In the two conditions the environments context of learning and recall matched, whereas in the other two they did not. Accurate recall was 40 percent lower in the non matching conditions.
