Explanations to forgetting: Interference theory
- Created by: emmarhianne
- Created on: 25-02-17 13:23
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- Explanations for forgetting: interference theory
- When to or more pieces of information conflicts with each other, resulting in forgetting one or both, in some cases a distortion of memory
- Proactive interference: past learning interferes with current attempts to learn something
- BENTON UNDERWOOD: Analysed the findings from a number of studies that concluded when pps have to learn a series of word lists they do not learn the list of words encountered later on in the sequence as well as the list of words encountered earlier on
- He found that if participants memorised 10 or more lists, then after 24 hours they remembered 20%, if they only learned one list recall was over 70%
- BENTON UNDERWOOD: Analysed the findings from a number of studies that concluded when pps have to learn a series of word lists they do not learn the list of words encountered later on in the sequence as well as the list of words encountered earlier on
- Retroactive interference: current attempts to learn something interfere with past learning
- MULLER AND PILZECKER: Gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes and then, after a retention interval, asked participants to recall the lists
- They found participants had poorer performance if they had been given an intervening task between initiail learning and recall. The intervening task therefore produced RI as the later task interferef with what had previously been learnt.
- MULLER AND PILZECKER: Gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes and then, after a retention interval, asked participants to recall the lists
- Most research has been lab based and often used artificial lists of words: Muller and Pilzecker- These findings may not relate to everyday uses of memory; which tends not to involve word lists.
- Participants may lack motivation to remember the links in such studies and this may allow interference effects to appear stronger- low ecological validity
- Research to support: DANAHER ET AL: Found that both recall and recongition of an advertiser's messge were impaired when pps were exposed to two advertisements for competing brads within a week. Suggests that one strategy might enhance the memory trace by running multiple exposures to an advertisement on one day rather than spread these out over a week.
- Led to real life application and increases its ecological validity of interference as an explanation to forgetting
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