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Explanations for forgetting (Interference (Proactive Interference (Old…
Explanations for forgetting
Interference
Proactive Interference
Old memories interfere with new memories
Example; calling your new boyfriend/girlfriend by your old boyfriend/girlfriends name
Retroactive interference
New memories interfere with old memories
Example; difficulty skiing because you've recently learnt how to snowboard
In the long term memory interference theory it suggest that forgetting can be experienced through getting memories mixed up and not that the memory is gone.
McGeoch and McDonald (1931)
Studied retroactive interference by looking at the similarity of materials
Participants learned a list of 10 adjectives until they could remember them with 100% accuracy. Then they had to learn a new list. There was 6 groups of participants and 6 conditions.
Group 1: synonyms- words with the same meanings to the originals.
Group 2: antonyms- words with the opposite meanings to the originals.
Group 3: words unrelated to the original words.
Group 4: nonsense syllables.
Group 5: three-digit : numbers
Group 6: no new list
The research showed that the more similar the words were the worse their recall was. This is evidence that interference is strongest the more similar the items are. Only interference, rather than decay, can explain such effects.
Evaluation
Strengths of using a lab experiment is that it's easy to replicate and the variables are controlled.
Weaknesses of using a lab experiment is that it lacks ecological validity, and there demand characteristics.
Baddeley and Hitch (1977)
The experiment was to investigate the effect of interference in the real world. They based it on rugby players and if they could recall the teams that they had played but some players didn't play all the games.
The research showed that those players who played most games forgot proportionally more team names. This supports the interference theory
Retrieval Failure
The reason people forget
Encoding Specificity principle
Context dependent forgetting