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Explanations of forgetting - Coggle Diagram
Explanations of forgetting
Proactive interference
Previous memories interfere with new memories
Old memories interfere with new material that we are learning which leads to greater forgetting
Examples
Learning a new phone number but using the old one
Retroactive interference
Recent memories interfere wit previous similar memories
Current learning interferes with existing knowledge that leads to greater forgetting
Examples
Stalling a manual car when you have been driving an automatic for a while
Strengths
Underwood 1957 - the more nonsense syllable word lists his students previously learned, the greater their forgetting of new nonsense syllable words was (proactive)
Supported by everyday experiences
Good practical application as can be applied to help stop forgetting in revision (not revising the same subject for too long)
Weaknesses
The research used as evidence to support comes from lab experiments which means that the results are hard to generalise due to low ecological validity
Reductionist and fails to take into account other explanations such as lack of cues
Absence of cues
Absence of context clues - environment matching to how it was during encoding and recall
Absence of state cues - internal environment (how you feel) is different at recall to encoding
Absence of organisational cues - category headings, sub-headings and acronyms.
Primary and recency effect
Items presented at the start of a series and the items presented at the end of the series are more likely to be remembered than the middle.
Glanzer and Cunitz 1966