| What is interference? | Explanation of forgetting in long term memory because memories disrupt one and another. |
| What is proactive interference? | You cannot learn a new task becuase of an old taks that has been learnt
Old memories block out new memories and stop them from being remembered |
| What is retroactive interference? | When you forget a previously learnt task due to the learning of a new task.
Where new memories disrupt old memories |
| What was the procedure and different groups for McGeoch and McDonald's study? | Participants had to lear a list of 10 words, until 100% accuracy. Then learnt a new list, ppts split into 6 groups of new words.
1: synonyms
2: antonyms
3: words unrealted to the orginal ones
4: consonant syllables
5: 3 digit numbers
6: control condition |
| Findings of McGeoch and McDonald? | When the similarity of the orignal words and new words were high, there is more likely to be retroactive interference. |
| What is a strength of McGeoch and McDonald's study? | Took place in a lab, controlled envrionment, no extraneous variables. |
| A strength of McGeoch and McDonald's study? | Standardised procedures, this means that the experiment can be replicated and tested for consistancy of results |
| A strength of McGeoch and McDonald's study? | It has real life applications, it is useful for students to understand how their memory will work |
| A weakness of McGeoch and McDonald's study? | Took place in a lab, lack of mundane realism in the task. HArd to apply to real life |
| A weakness of McGeoch and McDonald's study? | There was individual grouping therefore participant differences might affect the results. |
| A strength of interference theory? | McGeoch and McDonald's study is supporting research, supports the idea of retrosepctive interference. The idea that old memories of the words you have learnt will affect the new words if they are quite similar |
| A strength of interference theory? | Experiment about rugby players that play the same time intervals over one season, some play more than others due to injuries. Found that players that played the most found it harder to recall the names of the teams they have played. Supporting interference and increases validity for real life. |
| A weakness of interference theory? | Most supporting research like McGeoch and McDonald's stud took place in a lab, this makes it hard for the theory to be applied to real life, due to the results getting produced in a more controlled environment. |
| A weakness of interference theory? | Countering research from Tulving and Psotka, first list of words given, remembered with 70% accuracy which fell with more list - shows proactive interference. But when given prompts and cues, recall rose to 70% again. Counters theory - only temporary loss of accessibility, theory didnt predict it |
