Explanations for forgetting- Interference Flashcards
What is interference?
An explanation for forgetting, where one memory disrupting the ability to recall another.
Most likely to occur when the two memories have some similarity.
Proactive Interference
Past learning interferes with learning something new
Outline the study in to Proactive Interference
Underwood
Analysed studies where ppts has to memorise words in a list.
Found that ppts learned the words at the start of the lists better than the ones at the end
He found that if ppts memorised 10 or more lists, after 24hrs they only remembered about 20%.
If they only memorised 1 list, this was 70%
Retroactive Interference
Current attempts to learn interfere with past learning
Outline the study in to Retroactive Interference
Muller
Gave ppts a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes
Then asked ppts to recall the lists
Some ppts were asked to carry out an intervening task in between (asked to describe 3 paintings)
THESE PPTS PERFORMED WORSE IN THE RECALL because the later task interfered with the previous task.
What was the real world study carried out?
Baddely and Hitch - Rugby Players
> Rugby players recalling the names of teams they had played that season
> Some players played every match, some players missed games
> If interference theory is correct, the players who played the most games should forget more team names due to interference
> This is what they found, showing interference in everyday life
Outline the study into Similarity of test materials
McGeoch and McDonald
Gave ppts a list of 10 adjectives (LIST A)
Once this was learned they had a 10 mins interval, where they were presented LIST B, before recall.
If LIST B were synonyms of LIST A, recall was worse (12%)
If LIST B was nonsense syllabus, recall was 26%
If LIST B were numbers, recall of LIST A was 37%
AO3
Research is artificial
Most research uses artificial lists of words and nonsense syllables.
May not relate to every day use of memory
Ppts may also lack the motivation to remember the links, and so interference effects make appear stronger than they are
Therefore the research has low ecological validity
AO3
Interference doesn’t occur much in everyday life
Special occasions are required for interference to lead to forgetting, such as the two memories being similar.
This means that other theories are needed to provide a complete explanation for forgetting
AO3
Real world application in advertising
Found that recall and recognition of an advertisers message were impaired when ppts were exposed to both that advertisment and the advertisment of the competitor the same week.
Led to the conclusion that they should be exposed to the same advert multiple times in the same day rather than across the week.
Results in less interference from competitors advert.
