Explanations for Forgetting - Interference Theory
Forgetting : A failure to retrieve memories with explanations varying between those that see information as no longer within storage and explanations that see forgetting as a failure to access stored information
IT sees forgetting as due to information in LTM becoming confused with or disrupted by other information during coding, leading to inaccurate recall
Proactive Interference : Works forwards in time, occurring when information stored previously interferes with an attempt to recall something new, for example the memory of an old phone number disrupts attempts to recall a new phone number
Retroactive Interference : Works backwards in time, occurring when coding new information disrupts information stored previously, for example the memory of a new car registration prevents recall of an old one
Interference is generally researched by getting participants to learn 2 lists of word pairs, where the first word of each word pair is the same in both lists .
After the lists have been memorised participants are given the first word of a pair and are asked to recall which word goes with it
When proactive interference occurs, participants recall the first list of word pairs, while with retroactive interference the second list of word pairs is recalled
Baddeley and Hitch (1977) got participants who had played a varying number of rugby union games to remember as many of the teams they had played against as possible
Interference theory was tested by assessing how recall was affected by the number of games played, while trace decay theory was tested by assessing the amount of time that had passed between each game played
It was found that forgetting was due more to the number of games played rather than time passed between games, supporting interference theory rather than decay theory
Abel and Bauml (2013) gave participants either a single list of word pairs to learn or two lists of word pairs that would cause interference. Participants were tested on their memory of the lists after 12 hours of either wakefulness or sleep and it was found that sleep reduced both proactive and retroactive interference . This suggests that sleep helps to strengthen and stabilise memory content, making it less vulnerable to interference at recall
Evaluation
It only really explains forgetting when two sets of information are similar, for example when simultaneously learning french and welsh at school. This does not happen very often so interference cannot explain forgetting in the majority of real life settings
Research into interference tends to use laboratory experiments based around artificial tasks, such as learning a list of word pairs, and as such can be accused of lacking mundane realism.
Although studies show interference to be a real effect, they do not clearly identify the cognitive processes at work
There is more research support for cue dependent forgetting and other explanations of forgetting exist too, meaning IT cannot explain all examples of forgetting
