forgetting Flashcards
what is interefence
forgetting as one memory blocks another, causing one or both memories to be forgetten or distorted
what are the 2 types of interference
proactive intereference
retroactive interference
what is proactive interference
- older memory interferes with a new one ,
what is retroactive interference
- newer memory interfers with an older one
strength
p there is evidence of interference effects in everyday situations
e- baddeley and hitch 1977 asked players to recall the names of teams that they had played against during a rubgy season, the players all played for the same interval but the number of games played varied because some players missed matches due to injry
e- players who had played the most games had the poorest recall
l- shows that interference can operate in at least some real world situations, increasing the validity of the theory
limiation
p- temporary and can be overcame by using cues
e- tulving and psotka 1971 gave ppts a list of words organised into cateogries, one list at a time, recall averaged at about 70% for the first list, but became worse as pps learned each additional list
e - but had the words really disappeared from the ltm or were they still avaliable?. at the end of the procedure, pps were given a cued recall test, they were told the names of the categories, recall rose again to about 70%
l- shows that interference caused temproary loss of accessibility to material that is still in ltm, a finding not predcited by interference theory
strength
p- evidence of retrograde faciliation
E - Coenen et al (1997) gave pps a list of words and later asked them to recall the list, assuming the intervening experiences would act as interference. They found that when a list of words was learned under the influence of the drug diazepam, recall one week later was poor (compared with a placebo control group). But when the list was learned before the drug was taken, later recall was better than placebo. So the drug actually improved (facilitated) recall of material learned beforehand.
e- wixted 2004 suggested that the drug prevents new information reaching parts of the brain involving in processing memories , so it cant intefere retroactively with info already stored
l - findings show that forgetting an be due to interference and when you reduce the intereference you reduce the forgetting
limitation
p - inference is temporary, and can be overcome by cues
e- tucking and psotka 1971 gave pps a list of words, organised into categories, one list at a time, ( they didnt know what the categories were), recall averaged about 70% for the first list, but they became progressively worse as pps learned each others additional lists
e - but had the words really disappeared from the ltm or were they still available, at the end of the procedure pps were given cued recall tests, they were told the names of the categories and recall rose again to 70%
l- shows that interference caused temporary loss of accessibility to material that is still in ltm , a finding not predicted by interference theory
