explanations for forgetting: interference

Question 1

interference

Answer 1

-Explanation for forgetting in LTM, when one memory disrupts the ability to recall another.
-Most likely to occur when two memories have some similarity

Question 2

Pro-active interference

Answer 2

-Old memories interfering with new ones e.g forgetting the name of your new friends because the names of your olds friends are interfering.

Question 3

Retro-active interference

Answer 3

-New memories interfering with your old ones e.g forgetting content learnt during GCSEs due to new content learnt at alevel.

Question 4

Effects of similarity: McGeoch + McDonald (1931)

Answer 4

-Studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarities between 2 sets of materials.
Procedure:
-Ppts were given a list of 10 words to learn until they could recall them with 100% accuracy.
-Then they were given a new list to learn: synonyms, antonyms, unrelated words, consonant syllables, 3 digit numbers and no list (control group).
Findings:
-Found that interference is worse when words are similar.
-Interference was less with the 3 digit numbers.

Question 5

Baddeley + Hitch (1977)

Answer 5

Aims:
-Investigated rugby plaers’ ability to recall the names of teams they had played against during the rugby season.
-Some players played all the games of the season, whilst others missed some due to injurys.
-The time interval from the beginning to end of season was the same fore all players, BUT the number of intervening games was different for each player because of the missed games.
-Found that the players who played the most games, showed the poorest recall: their memories of playing lots of different games lead to interference and so they struggled to remember the teams names.

Question 6

Muller + Pilzecker (1900)

Answer 6

-First to identify retroactive interference effects.
Procedure:
-Gave ppts a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 mins and then after a retention interval asked ppts to recall the list.
-Performance wasnt as good if ppts had been given an intervening task between the inital learning and recall.
-Intervening task involved showing ppts 3 paintings of landscapes + asking them to describe them
-This task produced retroactive interference as the task of describing the pictures interfered with recalling the nonsense syllables.

Question 7

Underwood (1957)

Answer 7

-Analysed findings from a number of studies and concluded that when ppts have to learn a series of word lists they don;t learn the words in later lists as well as they learn the words in the first list they see.
-Found that if ppts memories 10 or more lists then after 24hrs they remembered 20% of what they learnt
-If they only learnt one list= recall over 70

Question 8

A03 EVAL

Answer 8

Limitation- interference is temporary and can be overcome by using cues.
-Tulving + Ptoska (1971) gave ppts lists of words organised into categories, one list at a time (ppts weren’t told what the categories were).
-Recall averaged about 70% for the first list, but became progressively worse as ppts learn each additional word list.
-End of procedure ppts were given a cued recall test: told names of categories= recall rose-70%
-Shows interference causes temporary loss of accessibility to material thats still LTM
-Finding not predicted by interference theory.