AQA Psychology Memory Comprehensive Exam With Complete Solutions 2024.

Interference - Answer Refers to when the material within the memory stores compete with each other and affect each other and similarly related memories may overwrite each other, meaning some information may be lost. Interference can be retroactive or proactive. Retroactive Interference - Answer New pieces of information that are learnt interfere with existing information in the memory stores. This information therefore competes and interferes with each other and the older information is lost. Retroactive Interference (Postman) - Answer Conducted a lab experiment where participants were split into two groups and both groups have to remember a list of paired words. The experimental group also has to learn a second list of words where the second paired word was different, and the control group was not given the second list of words. They found that the recall of the control group for the first list of paired words was more accurate than that of the experimental group that had the same list of words Proactive Interference - Answer Existing pieces of information learnt interfere with new information, this information competes with each other and the new information learnt is lost. Proactive Interference (Keppel & Underwood) - Answer gave participants nonsense trigrams to recall and a 3-digit number to count back from. Participants were asked to count backwards from the 3 digits number for a set duration and then recall the trigram. The duration of time counted backwards from was varied between 3,9 and 18 seconds in the first trail.