Interference

Question 1

What is proactive interference?

Answer 1

Forgetting occurs when older memories that have been already stored disrupt the recall of newer memories. The degree of forgetting is greater if the memories are similar.

Question 2

What is retroactive interference?

Answer 2

Forgetting occurs when newer memories disrupt the recall of of older memories that have been already stored. The degree of forgetting is greater if the memory is similar.

Question 3

If interference has been proposed as an explanation of LTM which is meant to be a permanent store why do we forget info if it’s permanent?

Answer 3

Any forgetting of ltm is most likely because we can’t get access to them even though they are available. Interference between memories make it harder for us to locate them. This is experienced as forgetting

Question 4

What are the 2 types of interference?

Answer 4

Proactive interference

Retroactive interference

Question 5

Outline McDonald and Mcgeoch procedure for effects on similarity?

Answer 5

Mcgeoch and McDonald studied retroactive interference by changing the amount of similarity between 2 sets of material. Participants had to learn a list of 10 words until they could remember them with 100% accuracy. Then after the learned the list there were divided in to 6 groups who had to Learn a new list.
Group 1: synonyms
Group 2: antonyms 
Group 3: unrelated adjectives 
Group 4: nonsense syllables 
Group 5: 3 digit numbers
Group 6: nothing 
 Then the participants were asked to recall the original list of words.

Question 6

What were McDonald’s and Mcgeoch findings?

Answer 6

When the participants were asked to recall the original list of words their performance depended on the nature of the 2nd list. The most similar material did the worst. This shows that interference is the strongest when the memories are similar.

Question 7

What is interference?

Answer 7

Forgetting because one memory blocks another, causing one or both memories to be distorted or forgotten