Interference Flashcards
What does the interference theory suggest about forgetting?
Interference theory suggests forgetting occurs due to two memories in the LTM competing and interfering with each other. The degree of Forgetting is greater when memories are similar
What two types of interference are there and explain them?
Proactive interference: Forgetting occurs when old memories already stored and learned learned is disrupting the recall of newer memories.
Retroactive interference: Forgetting occurs when newer memories stored and learned disrupt of older stored memories
AO3 for interference
- Underwood/ meta analysis on recall for a list of words (end of the list are recalled worse). Proactive interference
- Muller/nonsense syllables for 6 minutes one condition had intervening task during retention interval the other condition didn’t. (Retroactive interference)
- McGeoh and McDonald/ Similar information. They gave participants a list of 10 adjectives they had to learn. When learned there was a ten minute interval to learn another list knows as list B. Some participants got a list of synonyms, others nonsense words and other numbers. Numbers had the highest accurate recall rate while synonyms had lowest.
Outline Mullers research on retroactive interference
P: Muller provides research evidence to support retroactive interference
E: In his study they gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for six minutes, they were then given a retention interval and then asked participants to recall the list. However half of the participants got a intervening task during the retention interval which involved describing landscape pictures)
E: the participants who had the intervening task Recalled the list of nonsense syllables worse compared to the participants who didnt
L: this shows us that newer memories can disrupt the recall of older memories which means we can conclude that retroactive interference causes us to forget information.
Outline underwoods study
P: Underwood conducted a meta analysis on studies which involved the recall of a list of word to support proactive interference.
E: He found the end of the lists would be recalled worse compared to words at the start of the list.
L: this shows us older information does disrupt the recall of new memories therefore we can conclude that proactive interference causes us to forget information
Outline McDonald’s research
P: McDonald provides research evidence to support the interference theory of forgetting
E:He gave participants a list of ten adjectives to learn, after they had learned it they would have to learn another list. Some participants were given a list of synonyms to the adjectives, some were given nonsense words and the rest were given numbers.
E: They were then asked to recall the list of adjectives. He found that participants who had the list of numbers had the highest accuracy recall rate while participants with synonyms had the lowest accuracy recall rate.
L: this shows us we can conclude that information learned that is more similar will make the degree of forgetting greater.
