Interference - A03

Question 1

What are strengths of interference?

Answer 1

• P: Strength = evidence of interference effects in more everyday situations
• E: Baddeley and Hitch (1977): asked rugby players to recall names of teams they have played against during a rugby season
• E: Players who played the most games (most interefernce for memory) had the poorest recall
• L: This shows interference can operate in at least some real world situations, increasing the validity of the theory
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• P: Strength = Retrograde facilitation (evidence)
• E: Coenan and Luigdaar (1997): Gave PPs a list of words and later asked them to recall the list, assuming the intervening experiences would act as interference
• E: When list learned under the influence of diazepham (drug) recall one week later was poor (compared with placebo control group). When drug was taken after list learned recall was better than placebo. Wixted (2004): Suggests that the drug prevents new information reaching parts of the brain processing memories so it cannot interfere retroacitively with information already stored
• L: Forgetting can be due to interference - reduce the interference and you reduce the forgetting

Question 2

What is a limitation of interence?

Answer 2

• P: Limitation = interference is only temporary and can be overcome by cues
• E: Tulving and Pstoka (1971): Gave PPs a list of words organised into categories, one list at a time (PPs didn’t know the categories)
• E: Recall averaged about 70% for the first list but became worse as PPs learned each additional list (proactive interference). At the end the PPs were given a cued recall test, they were told the list of categories and recall rose again to 70%
• L: Interference causes a temporary loss of accessibility to material that is still in LTM, a finding not predicted by interference theory