Explanations for forgetting: Interference

Question 1

What is forgetting?

Answer 1

The failure to retrieve memories.

Question 2

When does interference occur?

Answer 2

When two pieces of information conflict with each other.

Question 3

Interference has been proposed mainly as an explanation for forgetting in which type of memory?

Answer 3

Long-Term Memory (LTM).

Question 4

Which type of interference is this?
A teacher who has learned so many names in the past that she has difficulty remembering the names of her current class correctly.

Answer 4

Proactive interference.

Question 5

What are the two types of interference?

Answer 5

• Proactive interference,

- Retroactive interference.

Question 6

Which type of interference is this?

Your friend decides to go by a new nickname but you keep calling them by their old name.

Answer 6

Proactive interference, the old name interferes with the nickname.

Question 7

Which type of interference is this?
Ben lived at 112 Dunster Road for 5 years, he then moved to 10 Lambert Street and then, moved to 145 Dunster Road. After being there a year, he’s asked for his address and he says ‘112 Dunster Road’ before realising his mistake.

Answer 7

Proactive, the old address of this road corrupts the new address.

Question 8

What is proactive interference?

Answer 8

Occurs when previously learnt information interferes with learning new information.

Question 9

Once memories are in the LTM they are more-or-less permanent, therefore,why would we forget them?

Answer 9

Any forgetting of LTM is most likely because we cannot access the memories (even though they are available).

Question 10

Which type of interference is this?
A teacher who has learned so many new names this year that she has difficulty remembering the names of her old class correctly.

Answer 10

Retroactive interference.

Question 11

Which type of interference is this?
Joy takes a bike ride in Amsterdam and learns that, to stop a bike, you need to pedal backwards. She finds this very difficult to do as she automatically pulls the handlebars whenever she wants to brake even though there is no brake there.

Answer 11

Proactive, she is used to having a brake on the handlebars and this corrupt new learning of the brake being in the pedals.

Question 12

How can you tell which type of interference is proactive? (pro =)

Answer 12

Pro = working forwards, from old to new.

Question 13

Which type of interference is this?
Elsie gets a new bank card and memorises the PIN. When she wants to use her old card, she cannot remember the PIN for it.

Answer 13

Retroactive, leaning of the new PIN corrupts learning of the old PIN.

Question 14

How can you tell which type of interference is retroactive? (retro =)

Answer 14

Retro = working backwards, from new to old.

Question 15

Which type of interference is this?
Jim has played doubles tennis for years but when his friend stops playing, he decides to start playing singles matches. At first he keeps the ball within the ‘singles’ part of the court but after a few matches, he keeps hitting the ball into the tramlines, forgetting this is not allowed in a singles match.

Answer 15

Proactive, the old court rules is corrupting the new court rules.

Question 16

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 16

Occurs when recent learning interferes with information we have previously learned.

Question 17

Which type of interference is this?
After being dumped by his girlfriend Julie, Jonathan starts going out with a girl called Judy. When describing her to a friend, he refers to her as Julie.

Answer 17

Proactive, Julie’s name is corrupting Judy’s name.

Question 18

Which type of interference is this?
Your friend invites you to a party months in advance on the 12th July. Nearer the time they say they made a mistake with the date and the party was actually the 16th August. Later on they call back and say, the first date was actually correct. However, you cannot remember the first date.

Answer 18

Retroactive interference, the new date corrupts the old date.

Question 19

Which type of interference is this?
Lucy learns French at primary school then learns Spanish as well as French at secondary school. When her Spanish teacher asks her what the Spanish for ‘dog’ is, she responds the French name ‘chien’.

Answer 19

Proactive, the previously learnt French word affected the newly learnt Spanish word.

Question 20

Which type of interference is this?
Marie changes her email address after getting a lot of spam emails, six months later her friend asks her what her old email address was but she has forgotten.

Answer 20

Retroactive, the new email corrupted the memory of the old email.

Question 21

Who assessed the influence of retroactive interference upon the memory of street names learned as a kid?

Answer 21

Schmidt et al. (2000)

Question 22

Describe Schmidt’s research into retroactive interference:

Answer 22

• 700 participants randomly selected from a Dutch school database.
• Each sent a questionnaire with a map that had 48 street names hidden as numbers (asked to remember as many of the numbers as possible).
• 211 responses (aged 11-79), appropriate details noted.
• Memory was affected by number of houses moved, which suggests retroactive forgetting has some real-life aplication.

Question 23

Evaluate Schmidt et al. (2000)’s study: (+, -, -)

Answer 23

+ Shows retroactive forgetting has some influence in real-life settings which can be further adapted to test proactive interference.

• Extraneous variables such as age make it impossible to know if the independent variable is directly affecting the dependant variable.
• Only shows an association, correlation does not always mean causation.

Question 24

Who studied retroactive interference by changing the similarities between two sets of materials?

Answer 24

McGeoch and McDonald (1931).

Question 25

In McGeoch and McDonald’s experiment (1931), what were the 6 different word lists and which caused hte most interference?

Answer 25

1) Synonyms,
2) Antonyms,
3) Unrelated to original words,
4) Consonant syllables,
5) Three-digit numbers,
6) No new list (control).

1 = most interference and 6 = least interference.

Question 26

Describe Baddeley and Hitch’s study (1977):

Answer 26

• Asked rugby players to remember as many teams as possible they had played against.
• They found forgetting was due to no. of games played rather than time passed.
• Supports interference theory as more games played means more teams interfering.

Question 27

Describe McGeoch and McDonald’s study (1931):

Answer 27

• Ptps were asked to learn a list of 10 words until they could remember with 100% accuracy.
• They then learned a new list (one of six types).
• Performance depended heavily on the nature of the second list, most similar words (synonyms) produced most interference.

Question 28

AO3 - Evidence from lab studies.

Answer 28

Interference theory is one of the most consistently demonstrated findings in all psychology, thousands of lab experiments have been carried out into this area. This is a strength because lab studies give confidence that there are little extraneous variables and increases validity of the theory.

Question 29

AO3 - Artificial materials.

Answer 29

The stimulus material used in lab studies are mostly list of random words, the task facing participants is usually learning these words. However, this is not representative of what we would have to remember in every day life such as faces, dates and shopping lists.

Question 30

Name a study which demonstrated that retroactive interference has some effect in real-life situations:

Answer 30

Schmidt et al. (2000) -number of roads forgotten has a strong positive correlation with number of times moved house.

Question 31

AO3 - Real-life studies.

Answer 31

The theory is shown in everyday situations during experiments, Baddeley and Hitch (1977)’s study on rugby players remembering the teams they had played in an example of the theory. This shows it can have practical context outside of a lab environment.

Question 32

AO3 - Cues.

Answer 32

The effects of interference can be counteracted by cues, Tulving and Psotka (1971) proved recall can be greatly increased using cue cards. This is a negative for the theory as in real-life there are cues to aid memory which the theory does not account for.