Interference Theory Flashcards
AO3 research to support
Research to support interference theory as an explanation for forgetting was conducted by McGeoch and McDonald who gave participants a list of 10 words to learn (list A) participants then had to learn a second list of words (List B ) participants were then asked to recall list A if was found that if list B was a list of similar meaning words to list A recall was poor 12% however if the words in list B were different to list A recall was higher 26% this supports interference theory as an explanation for forgetting because it demonstrates that interference is the strongest the more similar the items are which is what theory predicts
Discussion
A strength of interference theory as an explanation for forgetting is that McGeoch and McDonald is that it’s high in reliability. As it was conducted in a controlled lab settings and therefore can be repeated in the same conditions e.g give each participant the same time to learn the word list to gain consistent results into the effects of interference on forgetting. This supports the research provides for interference theory as an explanation of forgetting
AO3
However critics would argue that there is a much greater chance of interference demonstrated in research studies than in real life situations this is because the research lacks mundane realism artificial tasks such as learning a list of words are often used therefore it is difficult to generalise the findings to real life examples of dorgettjng as the research does not reflect what we would try to remember in everyday life such as birthdays etc. these memories are less likely to be contaminated as they are more meaningful to us thus memories are less likely to be contaminated by interference as an explanation for forgetting
