Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Explanations of Forgetting 1 - Coggle Diagram
Explanations of Forgetting 1
Interference
: Forgetting because one memory blocks the recall of another, causing one or more to be forgotten.
Proactive Interference
Definition
: Forgetting occurs when older memories disrupt the recall of newer memories.
KEPPEL AND UNDERWOOD - Aim
: Examined the effect of proactive interference on LTM, in an experiment which resembles Peterson and Petersons.
Method
: Participants were presented with meaningless 3-letter consonant trigrams at different intervals. To prevent rehearsal they had to count backwards in 3's before recalling. They were asked to come back at later stages to take part in a few trails of the task which involved then learning new trigrams.
Results
: Participants typically recalled the trigrams that were presented first, irrespective of interval length. They were also poor at recalling later trigrams as earlier learning of trigrams has interfered with later learning.
Conclusion
: The results suggest that proactive interference occurred because the memory for the earlier consonants interfered with the memory for new consonants.
(+) Proactive interference is supported by research
: Method and results.
(-) Studies that support interference tend to be lab based
: Keppel and Underwood involved participants recalling trigrams at different time intervals - not an everyday task and doesn't test memory in a realistic way.
Retroactive
Definition
: Forgetting occurs when newer memories disrupt the recall of older memories
POSTMAN - Aim
: To investigate how retroactive interference affects learning.
Method
: Lab experiment - Split into groups - remember a list of paired words. Group A (experimental) - had to learn another list of words where the second paired word was different. Group B (control) - were not given a second list. All participants were asked to recall words in first list.
Results
: The recall of the control group was more accurate than that of experimental group.
Conclusion
: This suggests that learning items in the second list interfered with participants' ability to recall the list - retroactive interference.
(+) Retroactive interference is supported by Postman
: method and results
(+) Lab experiments have high control
- high control over extraneous variables and can establish cause and effect. Confident that the IV (which group) caused the DV (number of words correctly recalled). Unlikely to be affected by confounding variables.
(+) Supported by evidence in the real word: Baddeley and Hitch
- wanted to find out if interference was a better explanation of forgetting than the passage of time. Asked rugby players to remember the names of the teams they had played so far. Accurate recall did not depend on how long ago they had played the matches. More important - the number of games they had played. Recall of a team was better from 3 weeks ago if they had played no games since then. Shows interference in every day situations.
(-) Only explains forgetting when information is similar
: E.g., it can only explain why we find it difficult to learn French when we already know German - this doesn't happen very often.