(AO1) What are two types of interference?
Proactive interference / Retroactive interference
(AO1) What is proactive interference?
Forgetting occurs when older memories, already stored, disrupt recall of newer memories. The degree of forgetting is greater when the memories are similar.
(AO1) What is retroactive interference?
Forgetting occurs when newer memories disrupt the recall of older memories already stored. The degree of forgetting is again greater when the memories are similar.
(AO1) Which two researchers studied the effects of similarity?
John McGeoch & William McDonald
(AO1) Explain the procedure
- 6 groups
- Made to revise a list of 10 words until 100% accuracy.
- First 5 groups were made to learn a new list with different word types. E.g synonyms, antonyms.
- Last group didn’t learn a new list, they just rested. (Control condition).
(AO1) What were the findings?
- When asked to recall the old list groups who learned similar material to the original list had the worst recall.
(AO1) Explanations of the effects of similarity
Two possible reasons:
- It could be due to proactive interference, previously stored information makes new similar information more difficult to store.
- It could also be due to retroactive interference, new information overwrites previous similar memories because of the similarity.
(AO1) Name three examples of interference
- Forgetting adverts
- Caleb (films)
- Driving (Home and abroad)
(AO1) Explain forgetting adverts
- Raymond Burke and Thomas Skrull present a series of magazine adverts to participants.
- They had to recall details of what they had seen, e.g brand names.
- Some cases showed difficulty in recalling both earlier and later adverts.
- The more similar the adverts the more greater the effect. (That is, the adverts were for identical products by different brands).
(AO1) Explain about Caleb (films)
- Caleb saw a film about zombies a while back, then went to see a different one recently.
- Ashton a friend asked about the first film but Caleb had trouble recalling details accurately.
- Anais a second friend then asked about the more recent film but Caleb again seemed to forget some parts of it.
(AO1) Driving (Home and abroad)
To illustrate the difference between the two types of of interference image you have learned to drive a car in the UK.
- You will have learned to drive on the left side of the road.
- You go to Spain for the holidays, and hire a car.
- Driving out of the airport, you narrowly avoid causing an accident because you failed to drive on the right. ( one example of interference).
- You return to the UK and, driving out the car park, you find yourself in the right-hand lane. (Another example of interference).
(AO3) Real world situation key people and in what year
Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch (1977)
(AO3) Real world situation strength
There is evidence of interference effects in more everyday situations.
(AO3) Real world situation explanation
- (1977) both researchers asked rugby players to recall the names of the teams they had played against during a rugby season.
- The players all played for the same time interval (one season) but the number of intervening games varied because some players missed matches due to injury.
Finding: Players who played the most games (most interference for memory) had the poorest recall.
Conclusion: This shows interference can operate in at least some real-world situations, increasing the validity of the theory.
(AO3) Real world situation counter
Interference can cause forgetting in everyday situations but it is unusual.
- The conditions necessary for interference to occur are relatively rare.
- This is very unlike lab donations, the high degree of control created by researchers can create ideal conditions for interference.
- For instance, as we have seen on this spread, two memories (or sets of learning) have to be fairly similar in order to interfere with each other.
- This may happen occasionally in everyday life (e.g if you were to revise reminisce subjects close in time), but not often.
(AO3) Use of cues key people
Endel Tulving and Joseph Postka
(AO3) Use of cues limitation
A limitation is that interference is temporary and can be overcome by using cues. (Hints or clues to help us remember something).
(AO3) Use of cues explanation
- (1971) both researchers gave participants lists of words organised into categories, one list at a time (participants were not told what the categories).
- Recall averaged about 70% for the first list, but became progressively worse as participants learned each additional lost (proactive interference).
- At the end participants were given a cues recall test - they were told the names of the categories.
Recall rose again to about 70%.
Conclusions: This shows that interference causes a temporary loss of accessibility to material that is still in LTM, a finding not predicted by interference theory.
