Explanations For Forgetting Flashcards
What is Interference?
An explanation for forgetting that claims information is lost due to confusion with other, similar information.
What is Proactive interference?
When old information affects our ability to learn new information.
What is retroactive interference?
When new information affects our ability to remember old information.
What is retrieval failure?
When information is unable to be transferred from LTM to STM due to a lack of cues.
What is Context-Dependent forgetting?
An explanation of why trying to recall something in a different situation to when you learn it, is difficult.
What is State-Dependent forgetting?
An explanation of why trying to recall something in a different mental state or emotion to when you learnt it, is difficult.
Reasons FOR the interference theory:
Research support - Underwood - participants who are asked to memorise several word lists tend to be better at recalling the worlds in the earlier lists. This supports Proactive because because the early lists make it hard to recall the later ones).
Muller and Pilzecker - participants who were given a distraction task between learning a lists of nonsense syllables and recalling them performed worse than whose did not complete a distraction task.
Reasons AGAINST the interference theory
- Research is artificial - the studies tend to ask participants to learn lists of words in lab setting. This doesn’t reflect real life memories
- Memories are not necessarily lost - Ceraso (1967) - conducted an interference experiment and found similar results to the others. They were then retested and released they could remember words of recognition.
