Jess McSevney
Outline and evaluate 2 explanations of forgetting in Long-term memory.
Interference plays a major part in forgetting in long-term memory. This explanation says that one set of learning interferes with another set and it clears out the memory. In experiments the more similar the information is, the more likely interference will happen. A distinction has been made between two types of interferences. The are proactive and retroactive. The word proactive means when your early/old memories are disrupted or displaced by new information. An example of proactive interference is giving out your old address instead of giving your new or current address. The word retroactive means when later or new memories disrupt with the old memories. An example of retroactive is when you can remember your old new house address and forget the old, as it has been displaced by the new information.
Retrieval failure in long-term memory happens because the correct cues are not available. Everyone is familiar with the feeling when we know something, but we can’t function our minds to recall that information. The information is there but we cannot access it, until the appropriate cue is given. This was illustrated by the ‘Tip of the Tongue’ phenomenon. Brown had devised an experiment to create the ‘tip of the tongue’ effects. The participants were given definitions of uncommon words and asked to identify them. Sometimes words were produced of similar sounds or meanings. The psychologists have reasoned that forgetting from long-term memory is always a retrieval failure deficiency and almost all the information is stored, but the only problem we come across is trying to find a way to access the information.
