Interference Flashcards
Summarise interference .
• Forgetting in LTM can occur through Interference.
• Interference is when one set of information competes with another, causing it to be confused in LTM.
• Forgetting through interference is more likely when the two sets of information are similar.
• Forgetting through interference is more likely to occur when there is a short time gap between the instances of learning.
Summarise proactive interference
PRoactive is when PRevious information competes with new information so the new information is forgotten.
E.g. You get a new mobile phone and you give someone your old number instead of your new one, as the previous information outcompetes the new information.
Summarise retroactive interference
REtroactive is when REcent information competes with old information so the old information is forgotten.
E.g. You learn French at GCSE then learn Spanish at A-level and find that the recent Spanish words outcompetes the old French word.
Research support for proactive interference.
Wickens (1972) gave participants 4 trials, using the same procedure as Peterson and Peterson’s duration experiment (i.e. nonsense trigrams). The stimuli in the first 3 trials was the same (letter based), but the stimuli in the 4th trial was number based. Wickens found that performance gradually declined in trials 1-3, but the number based trial remained at almost 100% recall. Wickens believed that because the material in the 4th trial was different with it being numbers rather than letters because it was easier to remember. The decline in performance in trials 1-3 shows evidence of interference as the old information i.e. trial 1 interfered with the learning of the letters in trials 2 and 3 because the information was similar.
Why is artificiality an issue ?
Artificiality – Interference research is often criticised for being artificial. Much of the research evidence has come from artificial laboratory experiments which use tasks that lack mundane realism. For example, Wickens (1972) study required participants to learn and recall nonsense trigrams. These tasks are very rare in day to day life; therefore, the research appears to have very little relevance to everyday situations. Because of this, ecological validity can be questioned, and the results cannot be applied to forgetting in the real world. However, interference effects have been observed in everyday situations for example, Baddeley and Hitch’s (1977) rugby study.
Research support for retroactive interference
investigated interference effects in an everyday setting of rugby players recalling the names of the teams they had played against over a rugby season. Some players played in all of the games whereas some players missed games due to injury. It was found that the players who had played most games had poorest recall (most interference). These results support the idea of retroactive interference, as the learning of new information (new team names) interfered with the memory of old information (earlier team names) causing them to be forgotten
Application to real world.
One strength of interference theory is that this area of research has important practical applications. Chandler (1989) found that students who study similar subjects at the same time often experience interference and are more likely to forget information. For example, due to the similar nature of material, revision of Psychology followed by Sociology should be avoided because one will interfere with the recall of the other. Students should therefore plan their revision effectively to avoid confusion. This is a strength because interference research can be used to help us to avoid forgetting and to improve recall in important real-world situations such as within education.
