Explanations For Forgetting

Question 1

What is interference?

Answer 1

When two pieces of information conflict with each other, resulting in the forgetting of one or both of the parts of information or some distortion in the memory

Question 2

What kind of memory does interference theory affect?

Answer 2

Long-term memory

Question 3

What are the two kinds of interference?

Answer 3

Proactive interference and retroactive interference

Question 4

What is proactive interference?

Answer 4

When an older memory interferes with a new one.

Question 5

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 5

When a new memory interferes with an older one

Question 6

What causes both retroactive and proactive interference to become worse?

Answer 6

When the pieces of information in the memories are similar

Question 7

What are the two possible reasons behind why similarity of memories causes interference?

Answer 7

It could be due to proactive interference where previously stored information makes new similar information. More difficult to store.

It could be due to retroactive interference where new information over previous similar information because of similarity.

Question 8

What is the strength of interference theory?

Answer 8

Control with laboratory experiments are consistently used to demonstrate findings in interference theory.

Question 9

What is an issue with interference theory?

Answer 9

Although controlled lab studies often used to study at most material used in the studies or lists of words. For example, remembering a list of consonant syllables.

Question 10

What is research into interference theory?

Answer 10

Rugby players were asked to recall the names of teams they played earlier in the rugby season. The amount that they remembered depended on how many games they played since as if they had played a lot of games since retroactive interference took place but interference took place if they haven’t played once since.

Question 11

Why does retrieval failure happen?

Answer 11

When you have insufficient cues

Question 12

When information is placed in the memory, what else is stored at the same time?

Answer 12

Associated queues that will help you remember this memory

Question 13

What does encoding specificity principal state?

Answer 13

That if a queue is used to help us recall information and it has to be present at encoding and at retrieval
Therefore, the more cues person is exposed to the more they’re likely to remember

Question 14

What are the two kinds of non-meaningful cues?

Answer 14

Context dependent forgetting
State dependent forgetting

Question 15

What is context dependent forgetting?

Answer 15

This is when you can only recall when there is an external cue (e.g weather or a place)

Question 16

What is state dependent forgetting?

Answer 16

When you can only recall if there are internal cues (e.g feeling upset or being drunk)

Question 17

What is the study for context dependent forgetting?

Answer 17

The aim was to see if memory for words learned and recorded in the same environment was better than if learned and recorded in a different environment.

They had both female and male divers divided into four conditions:
Learning and recalling words on land
Learning and recalling underwater
Learning on land and recalling underwater
Learning underwater and recalling on land

Repeated message design was used where each participant took part in all conditions over four days.

Participants were told to write all the words they could remember out of a list that they heard in any order.

It was found by accurate recall was 40% lower in the nonmatching conditions.

Question 18

What was the study on state dependent forgetting?

Answer 18

Similar to the diving study, a test was created with four conditions where participants would learn a list of words on antihistamines and then recall while on them, learn on them and then recall when not, learn not on them and recall not on them, and finally learn not on drugs and recall while not on them. They found the test performance were significantly were in matching conditions.

Question 19

What is a strength of retrieval theory?

Answer 19

There is a large range of research supporting it such as the diving and the antihistamine study. This increases validity as it shows that this research is applicable to real life situations and highly controlled lab studies.