What is the definition of Interference?
An explanation in terms for forgetting in terms of one memory disrupting the ability to recall another. Most likely occurs when the two memories have a similarity.
What is the definition of positive interference?
When past learning interferes with current attempt to learn something.
What is retroactive interference?
Current attempt to learn something interferes with past learning
Describe the research done for retroactive interference?
- Georg Miller and his student, identified retroactive interference effects.
They conducted study where, they gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes, and after a retention interval they had asked the participants to recall the list.
Results show that, performance by the participants was less good if the participants had been given an intervening task in between the initial learning and recall.
the overall results had shown that the intervening task produced retroactive interference because the laster task(describing pictures) interfered with what had previously been learnt.
Describe a research on proactive interference?
- benton underwood in 1957, analysed findings from a number of studies and conclude that when participants had to learn a series of word lists that don’t learn the lists of the words encountered later on in the sequence, as well as word lists earlier on.
Benton concluded that, if participants memorised 10 or more lists after 24hrs, they only could remember 20% of what they learnt. if they learned one list, the recall was over 70%.
- the more lists a participant has to learn, the worse their overall recall. explained by proactive interference, because each list makes it harder to learn subsequent lists.
Research on the similarity of test materials
- McGeoch and Mcdonald in 1931, experimented with the effects of similarity of materials. They gave participants a list of 10 adjectives(list A). once they were learnt, there was 10 minute interval where they had learnt List B. followed by another recall.
If list b was a list of synonyms of list S, the recall was poor(12%) . If list B was nonsense syllables, this had less effect on the recall around 26%. If List B was numbers, however this had the least effect around 37%.
This shows that interference is strong when they are more similar items.
Describe a real-world study
- Baddeley and Hitch in 1977, investigated interference effects in a real life setting, where rugby players had to recall the names of the teams they had played against over a rugby season. Some players participated in all the games, some had missed some games due to injury. The time interval from the start to the end of the season, was same for all players, but the number of intervening games was different for each layers due to missed games.
- if decay theory was to be proven right, all the players should recall a similar percentage of games played, because time alone should cause forgetting.
if interference theory is correct, the players who played the most games should forget more because of interference. Which is what Baddeley and Hitch found.
Evaluations of the interference theory:
- research is artificial
- interference only explains some situations of forgetting
- Accessibility versus availability
- Real-world application to advertising
- Individual differences
Research is artificial…
- research has used artificial words/nonsense syllables. Therefore it is not relatable to everyday uses of memory, which doesn’t involve word lists.
- furthermore, the participants may lack motivation to remember the links in such studies, they may allow interference effects to appear stronger than they really are.
- means overall that the research is low in ecological validity, although the counterargument in that is interference effects have been observed in everyday situations such as rugby.
Interference only explains some situations of forgetting…
- Interference effects do occur in everyday life, but they don’t occur that often.
- As certain conditions are required for interference to lead to forgetting, the two memories need to be similar. This is the reason why interference is considered to unimportant explanation for everyday forgetting
- This could be supported by Anderson(2000), who concluded that interference does play a role in forgetting, but how much forgetting can be attributed to interference remains unclear.
Overall, means that other theories are needed to provide a complete explanation of forgetting.
Accessibility vs Availability
Ceraso(1967), found that ,if memory was tested after 24hrs recognition(accessibility) had a spontaneous recovery. However, recall remained the same. This suggests that, interference occurs because memories are temporarily not accessible rather than have being lost(unavailable). Study of Tulving and Pstoka supports this finding.
This research supports the view that interference affects availability rather than accessibility.
Real-world application to advertising…
- there is research on effects of interference when people are exposed to adverts from competing brands within a short time period.
- Danaher et al(2008), found that recall and recognition of an advertiser’s message was impaired when participants, were exposed to two advertisements for competing brands in a week. Suggesting that there is a strategy to enhance the memory trace by running multiple exposures on an advertisement on one day, rather than a spread out over the week. Resulting in reduced interference, from competitors advertisements.
Showing how interference, can help advertisers to maximize the effectiveness of their campaigns and target their spending most efficiently.
Individual differences…
evidence that people are less affected by proactive interference than others.
- Kane and Engle(2000), showed that individuals with a greater working memory, were less susceptible to proactive interference. Researches have tested this by giving the individuals with three word lists to learn. Those participants with low working memory, showed greater proactive interference, when recalling the second and third lists, than compared to participants with high spans. A further test, had suggested that having a greater working memory means having greater resources to consciously control processing and counteract the effects of positive interference.
- This highlights, that individual differences play in how people are effected by interference.
