Memory: Explanations of forgetting

Created by: Tatterdemalion
Created on: 30-05-21 23:12

What is proactive interference?

The inability to learn new information due to the presence of conflicting old information e.g. going to the old cutlery drawer

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What is retroactive interference?

The inability to recall old information due to the presence of new memories preventing the old info's retrieval

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What is an example of proactive interference research?

Underwood (1957): Meta-analyses of a series of studies and concluded that participants learning a series of word lists tend to remember the earlier word lists as opposed to those later in the sequence

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What is an example of retroactive interference research?

Muller and Pilzecker (1900) gave participants a list of nonsense syllables to learn for 6 minutes and were then asked to recall these after a retention interval. Those who performed a task (describing landscape paintings) fared worse in recalling the kist

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What are the limitations of these approaches?

The research situations are artificial and the concept of interference is not widely applicable

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What is retrieval failure?

The idea that forgetting is the inability to access a memory, due to insufficient cues, rather than the memory no longer being available

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What is the Coding Specificity Principle?

An idea presented by Tulving and Thomas (1973) that memory is most effective if info present at the time of encoding is present at the time of retrieval. The cue need not be identical but the closer the better

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What is an example of research into the Coding Specificity principle?

Tulving and Pearlstone (1966) gave participants 48 words belonging to 12 catergories in a catergory-word format (e.g. fruit-apple, fruit-orange)

One group had to recall as many words as they could and the other were given cues and the cues group performe

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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

What is retroactive interference?

Back

The inability to recall old information due to the presence of new memories preventing the old info's retrieval

Card 3

Front

What is an example of proactive interference research?

Back

Card 4

Front

What is an example of retroactive interference research?

Back

Card 5

Front

What are the limitations of these approaches?

Back

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Memory: Explanations of forgetting