In a typical study of interference, subjects are asked to learn two successive verbal lists. The following day some are asked to recall the first list and others to recall the second. A third (control) group learns only one list and is asked to recall it a day later. People who learn two lists nearly always recall fewer words than those in the control group.
Theorists attribute the loss produced by these procedures to interference between list-learning tasks. When lists are constructed to exhibit varying differences, the degree of interference seems to be related to the amount of similarity. Thus, loss in recall will be reduced when two successive lists have no identical terms. Maximum loss generally will occur when there appears to be heavy (but not complete) overlap in the memory attributes for the two lists. One may recall parts of the first list in trying to remember the second and vice versa. (This breakdown in discrimination may reflect the presence of dominant attributes that are appropriate for items in both lists.) Discrimination tends to deteriorate as the number of lists increases, retroactive and proactive inhibition increasing correspondingly, suggesting interference at the time of recall.
In retroactive inhibition, however, not all of the loss need be attributed to competition at the moment of recall. Some of the first list may be lost to memory in learning the second; this is called unlearning. If one is asked to recall from both lists combined, first-list items are less likely to be remembered than if the second list had not been learned. Learning the second list seems to act backward in time (retroactively) to destroy some memory of the first. Much effort has been devoted to studying the conditions that affect unlearning, which has become a major topic in interference theory.
Retroactive and proactive effects can be quite gross quantitatively. If one learns a list one day and tries to recall it the next, learns a second list and attempts recall for it the following day, learns a third, and so on, recall for each successive list tends to decline. Roughly 80 percent recall may be anticipated for the first list; this declines steeply to about 20 percent for the 10th list. Learning the earlier lists seems to act forward in time (proactively) to inhibit retention of later lists. These proactive phenomena indicate that the more one learns, the more rapidly one forgets. Similar effects can be demonstrated for retroactive inhibition within just one laboratory session.
Such powerful effects have led some researchers to speculate that all forgetting is produced by interference. Any given memory is said to be subject to interference from others established earlier or subsequently. Interference, theoretically, may occur when memories conflict through any attributes. With a limited group of attributes and an enormous number of memories, it might seem that ordinary attempts at recall would be chaotic.Yet even if all of the memories shared some information, other attributes not held in common could still serve to distinguish them. For example, every memory theoretically is encoded at a different time, and temporal attributes might serve to discriminate otherwise conflicting memories. Indeed, when two apparently conflicting lists are learned several days apart, proactive inhibition is markedly reduced. Assuming that memories are multiply encoded, interference theory need not predict utter confusion in remembering.
Sources of interference are quite pervasive and should not be considered narrowly. For example, all memories seem to be established in specific surroundings or contexts, and subsequent efforts to remember tend to be less effective when the circumstances differ from the original. Alcoholics, when sober, tend to have trouble finding bottles they have hidden while intoxicated; when they drink again, the task is much easier. Some contexts also may be associated with other memories that interfere with whatever it is that one is trying to remember.
Each new memory tends to amalgamate information already in long-term storage. Encoding mechanisms invariably adapt or associate fresh data to information already present, to such an extent that what is encoded may not be a direct representation of incoming stimuli. This is particularly apparent when the input is relatively meaningless; the newly encoded memory comes to resemble those previously established (i.e., it accrues meaning). For example, a nonsense word such as LAJOR might be encoded as MAJOR. Challenges to interference theory
Although interference theory has attracted wide support as an account of forgetting, it must be placed in perspective. Interpretations that emphasize distinctions between short- and long-term memory and that posit control processes for handling information are potentially more comprehensive than interference theory, and the behavioral evidence for interference eventually may be explained within such systems.
In addition, a number of predictions derived from interference theory have not been well supported by experiment. The focus of difficulty lies in the hypothesis that interference from established memories is a major source of proactive inhibition. The laboratory subject is asked to learn tasks with attributes that have varying degrees of conflict with memories established in daily life. Theoretically, the more conflict, the greater the proactive interference to produce forgetting. Yet a number of experiments have failed to provide much support for this prediction.
Interference theory also fails to account for some pathological forms of forgetting. Repression as observed in psychiatric practice, for example, represents almost complete, highly selective forgetting, far beyond that anticipated by interference theorists. Attempts to study repression through laboratory procedures have failed to yield systematic data that could be used to test theoretical conclusions. Amnesia
If humans forgot everything, the consequences would be devastating to their daily lives. It would be impossible to do one’s job—much less find one’s way to work. Individuals who suffer damage to certain brain regions, particularly the hippocampus, experience this kind of significant memory loss, amnesia, which is marked by an inability to create new long-term memories. In addition, some amnesics lose their ability to recall events that occurred before the brain injury, a condition known as retrograde amnesia. Some amnesics do not experience deficits in short-term memory, and in many cases their memory deficits appear to be limited to the acquisition and recollection of new associations. If an amnesic is introduced to a new acquaintance who leaves the room and returns a few minutes later, the amnesic will not remember having met that person. However, amnesics are able to remember some types of new information, though they may be unaware that they are remembering. This was proved in the early 20th century by the French physician Édouard Claparède, who used a pin to prick an amnesic woman each time he shook her hand. Later the patient would not shake hands with Claparède, even though she could not readily explain why. In her case procedural memory effectively helped her avoid the physical pain that accompanied every act of shaking hands with the physician. Such studies demonstrate that procedural memory can function independently of conscious awareness.
Another form of forgetting is associated with the earliest stages of human development: nearly all people lack the ability to retain memories of experiences they had before they were three years old. Known as infantile amnesia, this universal phenomenon implies that the brain systems required to encode and retrieve specific events are not adequately developed to support long-term memory before age three. Another theory points to developmental changes in the means by which memories are formed and retrieved after early childhood, suggesting that the more-developed brain lacks the ability to access such early memories. Sigmund Freud, in contrast, proposed that infantile amnesia was a form of repression—in other words, a defense mechanism against disagreeable or negative recollections.