interference - explanaiton for forgetting

Forgetting

a persons loss of the ability to recall or recognise something they have previously learned

Interference

• When 2 memories become mixed up, confused, or interfere with each other so that or other of the memories become distorted or forgotten and cannot be recalled.

• This is more likely to occur when the 2 memories are similar.

Retroactive interference

New learning interferes with old learning

Proactive interference

Old learning interferes with new learning

Research support for retroactive interference

• Muller gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes, then after a retention interval he asked Ps to recall them.

• Performance was less good if the P’s had been given a task between initial learning and recall ( shown 3 landscape paintings and asked to describe them).

• Intervening task produced retroactive interference. 

Research support for proactive interference

• analysed findings from studies and concluded that when P’s have to learn a series of word lists they do not learn the later lists as well as the first ones a.

• This shows that the more lists a P has to learn, the worse their overall recall. This is explained by proactive interference as each list makes it harder to learn subsequent lists.

 

Research support for why similar items have stronger interference

• Researchers gave P’s a list of 10 adjectives, then resting interval for 10 minutes where they learned a second list. If list B was synonyms, recall was poor (12%) , if list B was numbers this had the least effect on recalling (37%)

• This shows that interference is strongest the more similar the items are.

 

Evaluaiton of interference - lab conditions

• P -  A limitation of interference theory is that much of the supporting research is conducted in artificial laboratory settings.

• E - Studies often use tasks such as learning lists of unrelated words, which lack ecological validity. In real life, memories are usually meaningful and have context, making them less vulnerable to interference.

• T - This reduces the validity of the theory as an explanation of forgetting in everyday situations, suggesting interference may not fully account for real-world memory loss.

Evaluation of interference - individual differences

• P - A strength of interference theory is that it can account for individual differences in forgetting.

• E - Research shows that people with greater memory capacity or more effective cognitive strategies are less affected by interference. Additionally, factors such as age or intelligence influence susceptibility, meaning interference effects are not uniform across individuals.

• T - This supports the theory’s applicability, as it recognises that forgetting varies between individuals rather than being a universal process.

 

Evaluation of interference - doesnt cause true forgetting

• P - Interference may not lead to permanent forgetting but instead affects the accessibility of memories.

• E- Evidence suggests that information is still stored in long-term memory but temporarily unavailable due to competing information. Retrieval cues can often restore access, indicating the memory trace itself is intact rather than erased.

• T - This challenges interference theory as a complete explanation of forgetting, as it implies forgetting is more about retrieval failure than actual loss of information.