Studies on Interference
Psychology: AQA A Level, topic 2.1.11
Study on Retroactive Interference
Underwood and Postman (1960) investigated how retroactive interference affects learning. In other words, does new learning affect your ability to recall previously learnt information?
Procedure
- A laboratory experiment with two groups of participants (control and experimental groups).
- Both groups were given word pairs to learn e.g. dog-bread, chair-fork etc.
- The experimental group was also given a second list to learn where the second word in the pair was changed e.g. dog-cake, chair-window etc. Both groups were then asked to recall the original list.
Results and conclusion
- Result: The recall of the control group was much better than the experimental group.
- Conclusion: The experimental group’s recall had been affected by retroactive interference.
Evaluation
- Strengths
- Reliable – easy to replicate.
- Practical applications for education, in particular revision.
- Limitations
- Lacks ecological validity – not how we use memory in everyday life.
- The results could be explained by the limited capacity of STM rather than retroactive interference.
- Interference only really explains forgetting when two pieces of information are really similar.
Study on Proactive Interference
Underwood (1957) investigated how proactive interference affects memory. In other words, do old memories affect your ability to recall new information?
Procedure
- A laboratory experiment.
- Participants were given a list of nonsense syllables to remember and tested 24 hours later.
Results
- Memory was much worse for these nonsense syllables than Underwood expected.
Conclusion
- Underwood concluded that the students’ experience of taking part in memory experiments in the past (even though none involved nonsense syllables) was causing confusion and led to proactive interference.
Evaluation
- Strengths
- Reliable – easy to replicate
- Practical application for education, in particular revision.
- Limitations
- Lacks ecological validity – not how we use memory in everyday life.
- Interference only really explains forgetting when two pieces of information are really similar.
Test yourself on Studies on Interference
Which researchers investigated the effect of retroactive interference on learning?
What was Underwood and Postman (1960)'s conclusion?
Describe Underwood (1957)'s research method when investigating proactive interference.
How did the participants perform when recalling nonsense syllables in Underwood (1957)'s experiment?