AO3 evaluation interfence

who investigated interference in the real world?

Baddeley and Hitch

How did Baddeley and Hitch investigate interference in the real world? What did they find?

• rugby players recall the names of the teams they had played against over a season

• Some players played in all games but some missed some due to injury

• Those who played more games tended to remember fewer team names

• Suggests that additional information from extra teams increased interference and reduced overall recall

What is unclear in Baddeley and Hitch real life interference study?

It’s not clear if the interference was retroactive or proactive.

High ecological validity as the impact of interfence was found outside of the lab

What might be a better explanation for forgetting and why might this be better

It’s rare to experience interference in the real world

(Even the examples of license plate and number all occur under specific circumstances)

A better explanation may be retrieval failure

What did Anderson consider about interference and the role it plays

Interference certainly plays a role in forgetting but how much forgetting can be attributed to it is unclear

Who led a study to see if interference led to permanent loss of information?

Or if the information could still be accessed if more cues were given

TULVING and PSOTKA

What did TULVING AND PSOTKA find?

What did they give ppt to learn?

How much could learn the first list?

What did they give at the end of the study?

Ppt were given lists of words that were organised into categories but the ppt were not told what the categories were

Ppt recalled about 70% of first list

Performance for first list became progressively worse for each additional list

At end of study ppt were given a test on what they could remember and were given the name of category for each list (a cue)

With cue ppt performance returned to 70% for each list

Suggests that interference had not removed the info from merely just caused a temporary loss of accessibility.

NOT PREDICTED BY INTERFERENCE THEORY

What is an issue for this area of research?

Lot of the studies have taken place in artificially high controlled lab environments

Lack of ecological validity

Might mean the explanation of interference also lacks ecological validity

What study is important to note as an exception to the lack of ecological validity issue?

BADDELEY AND HITCH

conducted in real world with a real world event

What is an example of a drug studied that support that forgetting can be due to interference ? What does WIXTED suggest

PPT given a word list and later asked them to recall the list

assume that later experiences would interfere with recall of word lists (retro)

When the world list was learnt on diazepam recall one week later was poor compared to the placebo group

WIXTED suggests that drugs prevent new information reaching parts of the brain that involved in processing memories

SO PREVENTS RETROACTIVE INTERFERENCE

study suggests that forgetting can be due to interfence

Reduce interfence = reduced forgetting

What is another limitation of interfence effects? What study did Edward do that was to do with PROACTIVE interfence

Some people are more resistant to the effects of interference than others

EDWARD and collleagues gave ppt a series of tasks to test their working memory capacity (WMC)

Highest and lowest scored were then given additional tasks designed to create proactive interference.

Found that people with high WMC were much less likely to be affected by PI than low WMC

What does the research suggest about High WMC and how does this suggest interfence is a limited explanation

high WMC is associated with an enhanced filtering ability which helps prevent irrelevant info from cluttering working memory

Makes high WMC individuals less susceptible to PI as they are more effective at maintaining focus on relevant information

Suggests that interference is a limited explanation of forgetting as it does not apply to all people.

What are the validity issues

most studies supporting interference theory are lab based so researchers can control variables (e.g the time between learning and recalling material)

Control over extraneous variables - studies show a causal link between interfence and forgetting

BUT

STUDIIEZ use artificial materials and unrealistic procedures

In everyday life we often learn something and can recall it much later - no interfence