Cognitive Interference (Proactive Interference, Retroactive Interference, Output Interference.)
Cognitive Interference (Proactive Interference, Retroactive Interference, Output Interference.)
Interference theory is theory regarding human memory. Interference occurs in learning when there is an interaction between the new material and transfer effects of past learned behavior, memories or thoughts that have a negative influence in comprehending the new material.Bringing to memory old knowledge has the effect of impairing both the speed of learning and memory performance. There are two main kinds of interference:
(#1) Proactive Interference.
(#2) Retroactive Interference.
The main assumption of interference theory is that the stored memory is intact but unable to be retrieved due to competition created by newly acquired information
[Proactive Interference]
Proactive interference is the "forgetting [of information] due to interference from the traces of events or learning that occurred prior to the materials to be remembered." Proactive interference occurs when, in any given context, past memories inhibit an individual’s full potential to retain new memories. It has been hypothesized that forgetting working memories would be non-existent if not for proactive interference.
[Context]
Proactive interference build up occurs with memories being learned in similar contexts. It is also associated with poorer list discrimination, which occurs when participants are asked to judge whether an item has appeared on a previously learned list. If the items or pairs to be learned are conceptually related to one another, then proactive interference has a greater effect.Delos Wickens discovered that proactive interference build up is released when there is a change to the category of items being learned, leading to increased processing in short term memory.
[Research]
[Lists]
Researchers have studied the joint influence of proactive and retroactive interference using a list of items to be remembered. As expected, recall was hampered by increasing the number items in a given list.Proactive interference also affected learning when dealing with multiple lists. Researchers had participants learn a list of 10 paired adjectives.The experimenters would consider a list to be learned if the participant could correctly recall eight of the ten items. After two days, participants could recall close to 70% of the items. However, those asked to memorize a new list the day after learning the first one had a recall of only 40%. Those who learned a third list recalled 25% of the items. Therefore, Proactive interference affected the correct recall of the last list learned, because of the previous one, or two. In terms of forgetting, the effect of Proactive interference was supported by further studies using different methods.The effect of proactive interference was reduced when the test was immediate and when the new target list was obviously different from the previously learned lists.
[Span Performance]
Span performance refers to working memory capacity. It is hypothesized that span performance is limited in language comprehension, problem solving, and memory.Proactive Interference affects susceptibility to span performance limitations, as span performance in later experimental trials were worse than performance in earlier trials.With single tasks, proactive interference had less effect on participants with high working memory spans than those with low ones. With dual tasks, both types were similarly susceptible.
To differ, others have tried to investigate the relation of proactive interference when cued to forget. Turvey and Wittlinger designed an experiment to examine the effects of cues such as "not to remember" and "not to recall" with currently learned material. While "not to remember" had a significant effect in reducing proactive interference, cued to "not to recall" previously encoded and stored information did not significantly reduce the effect. Therefore, these associated cues do not directly control the potential effect of proactive interference on short term memory span.
Proactive interference has shown an effect during the learning phase in terms of stimuli at the acquisition and retrieval stages with behavioral tasks for humans, as found by Castro, Ortega and Matute.With 106 participants, they investigated two main questions: if two cues are learned as predictors of the same outcome (one after the other), would the second-cue outcome association be retarded? And secondly, once the second association is fully learned, will there still be an effect on subsequent trials? The research, as predicted, showed retardation and impairment in associations, due to the effect of Proactive Interference.
[Retroactive Interference]
Retroactive interference (RI) is a phenomenon that occurs when newly learned information interferes with and impedes the recall of previously learned information.RI is a result of decreased recall of the primary studied functions due to the learning and recall of succeeding functions. RI is a classic paradigm that was first officially termed by Muller. These memory research pioneers demonstrated that filling the retention interval (defined as the amount of time that occurs between the initial learning stage and the memory recall stage) with tasks and material caused significant interference effects with the primary learned items.
As compared to proactive interference, retroactive interference may have larger effects because of the fact that there is not only competition involved, but also unlearning.
[Brigg’s Findings]
Briggs (1954) study modeled McGeoch’s work on interference by setting the stage for a classic design of retroactive interference. In his study participants were asked to learn 12 paired associates to a criterion of 100%. To ensure parsimony, these pairs can be labeled as A1-B1-, A2-B2-…Ai-Bi (also called AB/AC paradigm). Briggs used a "modified free recall" technique by asking participants to recall an item when cued with Bi. Over multiple anticipation trials, participants learned Bi items through the prompt of Bi items. After perfecting Ai- Bi learning, participants were given a new list of paired associates to learn; however Bi items were replaced with Ci items (now given a list of A1-C1-, A2-C2-…Ai-Ci). As the learning of Ai-Ci pairs increased, the learning of Ai-Bi pairs decreased. Eventually recalling the Ci items exceeded the recall of the Bi items, representing the phenomenon of retroactive interference. A significant part of Briggs (1954) study was that once participants were tested after a delay of 24 hours the Bi responses spontaneously recovered and exceeded the recall of the Ci items. Briggs explained the spontaneous recover illustration as an account of Ai-Bi items competing with Ai-Ci items or, as McGeoch would define it: "a resultant [of] momentary dominance.”
[Modified Modified Recall]
J.M. Barnes and B.J. Underwood (1959) expanded Briggs (1954) study by implementing a similar procedure. The main difference in this study, however, was that unlike Briggs (1954) "modified free recall" (MFR) task where participants gave one item responses, Barnes and Underwood asked participants to give both List 1 and List 2 responses to each cued recall task. Participants’ ability to recall both items was termed "modified modified free recall" (MMFR) technique. Equivocally to Briggs (1954) results, RI occurred when Ci recalled responses gradually came to exceed Bi responses. Barnes and Underwood argued that because there was "unlimited recall time" to produce multiple item responses, the fact that Ai-Ci responses still trumped Ai-Bi responses represented an account of unlearning.
[Competition]
A standard explanation for the cause of RI is Competition. New associations compete with older associations and the more recent association would win out making it impossible to remember earlier associations. Spontaneous Recovery in MFR supports the claim of competition since after a rest period participants spontaneously remembered original pair associations that they were not able to remember right after the second test.
[Associative Unlearning]
The associative unlearning hypothesis explains RI by saying that new associations replace the old associations in memory causing the participant to forget the initial associations. Barnes and Underwood argued that Ai-Ci responses still outnumbering Ai-Bi responses after the delay period supports the Associative Unlearning Hypothesis over Competition.
[Pitch Perception]
Retroactive Interference has also been investigated using pitch perception as the learning medium.The researcher found that the presentation of subsequent stimuli in succession causes a decrease in recalled accuracy. Massaro found that the presentation of successive auditory tones, confused perceptual short term memory, causing Retroactive Interference as the new tone inhibits the retrieval of previously heard tones.
[Motor Movement]
Wohldmann, Healey and Bourne found that Retroactive Interference also affects retention of motor movements.Researchers found that retroactive interference affects the performance of old motor movements when newly acquired motor movements are practiced.Physical practice of newly executed motor movements decreased the retention and recall of previously learnt movements. Despite the retroactive interference noted by Wohldmann et al., researchers noted that mental practice decreased the amount of retroactive interference, suggesting that mental practice is more flexible and durable over time. This study of the superiority effect of physical practice is similar to the Word Superiority Effect made famous by Cattell.
[Spreading Activation]
Retroactive Interference increases when the items are similar, therefore increasing association between them as shown by spreading activation. Barnes and Underwood found that when participants in the experimental condition were presented with two similar word lists, the recollection of the first word list decreased with the presentation of the second word list. This finding contrasts the control condition as they had little Retroactive Inference when asked to recall the first word list after a period of unrelated activity.
[Output Interference]
Output Interference occurs when the initial act of recalling specific information interferes with the retrieval of the original information. An example scenario in which Output Interference might occur would be if one had created a list of items to purchase at a grocery store, but then neglected to take the list when leaving home. The act of remembering a couple items on that list decreases the probability of remembering the other items on that list.
[Short Term]
Henry L. Roediger III and Schmidt found that the act of retrieval can serve as the source of the failing to remember, using multiple experiments that tested the recall of categorized and paired associative lists.Three experiments were carried out where subjects were first presented with category lists and then asked to recall the items in the list after being shown the category name as a cue.The further the test position from the category resulted in a decline of the recall of words. A fourth experiment revealed that only recent items were present in output interference in paired associative lists.
[Long Term]
Smith found that if categories with corresponding items were successfully recalled, a systematic decline would occur when recalling the items in a category across the output sequence. He conducted multiple experiments to determine the input conditioned necessary to produce Output Interference.In his first experiment word recall per category was greater at 60 sec than 30 sec when taking the last input category out to prevent recency effect.In his second experiment he changed the instructions, words used, and nature of the test for retention, and showed with recognition procedure, there was Output Interference but the effect was limited to the first three output positions. Even if retrieving items is necessary for recall, it is not crucial to performance in a recognition tack.Recall of the organized information from long-term memory had a negative effect on the following item recalled. In long-term memory, Smith suggests that Output Interference has effects on extra-core material, which is represented as contextual information, rather than core material, which is highly available as a result of organization.Both short and long term memories are centralized to the hippocampus and the amygdala