MEMORY: explanations for forgetting

AO1 - retroactive interference

• where learning something new interferes with past learning

• muller and Pilzecker 1990 demonstrated RI by giving participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn in 6 minutes and some participants were given an intervening task such as given 3 landscape paintings and asked to describe them

• performance was worse when participants were given an intervening task between initial learning and recall

• therefore the intervening task produced RI because the later task interfered with what had previously been learnt

AO1 - proactive interference

when past learning interferes with learning something new

• underwood 1957 analysed findings from a number of studies that found that participants were worse at learning a list of words later in a sequence, in comparison to those presented earlier on.

• furthermore, underwood found that if participants had to remember 10 lists of words then after 24 hours they remembered about 20% of what was learnt and if they learnt only one list, about 70% was able to be recalled

• these results suggest that PI occurs when learning multiple word lists

AO3 - research is artificial

one criticism of research investigating interference is that research is somewhat artificial

most of the research investigating interference is laboratory based and uses artificial word lists of words and/or nonsense syllables

therefore the findings may not relate to everyday sues of memory which tend to not involve simple word lists

this suggests that the results of interference lack ecological validity

AO3 - only explains some types of forgetting

interference onlynexplains some types of forgetting

• Anderson 2000 concluded that there is no doubt that interference plays a role in forgetting, but how much forgetting can be attributed to interference remains unclear

• fro example rather special conduit ns are required for interference to lead to forgetting - the two memories need to be quite similar

• this means that other theories are needed to provide a complete explanation for forgetting

AO3 - contrasting strength

there is a considerable body of research on the effects of interference when people are exposed to adverts from competing brands within a short period of time

danaher et al 2008 found that both recall and recognition of an advertisers message were impaired when participants were exposed to two advertisements for completing brands int he same week

they suggest that one strategy might be to enhance the memory trace by running multiple exposures to advertisement on one day rather than spread out over a week - this results in reduced interference from competitors advertisements

this matters because research can potentially save advertisers money and enhance the the effectiveness of advertising campaigns