Limitations of laboratory studies of interference theory
- Learning in such studies is not natural, it does not occur in the same way as it does in the real world. Example: learning is artificially compressed in time, which maximises the chances of interference occurring.
- Laboratory studies tend to use nonsense words as a stimulus material. Example: zippy do. When meaningful material is used, interference is more difficult to demonstrate.
- When people have to learn, for example the response ‘bell’ to the stimulus ‘woj’, the word ‘bell’ is not actually learned in a laboratory, since it is already part of people’s semantic memory. What is being learned is stored in a different type of LTM, called episodic memory. Semantic memory is much more stable and structured than episodic, and so is much more resistant to interference effects.
Emotional Factors in forgetting
According to Freud (1901), forgetting is a motivated process rather than a failure of learning or other processes.
When memories are suppressed they can be remembered with effort and sufficient cues. Repressed memories, on the other hand, cannot be remembered by conventional strategies or increasing cues. When a memory is repressed, the person is not consciously aware of the memory.
Levinger and Clark (1961) looked at the rotation of associates to negatively charged words, such as angry, fear etc compared with those for neutral words, such as window, cow etc. The experiment showed that the participants had trouble remembering the associations to the emotionally charged words.
However, there are other studies that have shown that whilst highly arousing words tend to be poorly recalled when tested immediately, the effect reverses after a delay. If the words are being repressed, this should not happen; they should stay repressed, suggesting that arousal was the cause of the reversal. Very early memories of childhood traumas are implicit rather than explicit, and are not usually part of our conscious awareness. Therefore, repression is not necessary for explaining the ‘forgetting’ of childhood experiences.
Recovered memories and false memory syndrome
It is difficult to accept recovered memorises literal interpretations of past events (such as child sexual abuse) is that they might have happened at a very early age. Very early memories are implicit rather than explicit, and are not usually part of our conscious awareness.
False memories can be constructed by combining actual memories with the content of suggestions from others. This may result it source confusion, in which the content and the source become dissociated. However, the fact that false memories can be created does not mean that all recovered memories are false.
Flash back memories
This is when the brain has recorded an event like the scene caught in the glare of a camera’s flashlight. The vividness of flash back memories is no guarantee of their accuracy, and we only have flash back memories of events, which have personal relevance and consequences.
Brown and Kulik’s study showed that there is a special mechanism in the brain, which is triggered by events that are emotionally arousing, unexpected or extremely important. This results in the whole scene becoming ‘printed’ on the memory.
Flash back memories are durable because they are frequent rehearsed and reconsidered after the event. However, the detail of people’s memories and their vividness are not necessarily signs of their accuracy. Studies, which have failed to find evidence of flash back memories, may have concerned events, which lacked personal consequences for the participants.
