Developmental psychology.pdf

248 Learning and Information Processing
Figure 9.14
Activity and Recall. Recall after
normal activity was consistently less
than recall after sleeping (Jenkins &
Dallenbach, 1924).
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were allowed to be normally active elsewhere, after which all the cockroaches were
tested by the method of relearning. On these tests it was found that the active group
required far more trials to relearn the task than did the group made to remain motionless
(Minami & Dallenbach, 1946; Figure 9.15).
These outcomes suggest that it is what happens in the passage of time that
causes forgetting. All living organisms are constantly exposed to numerous stimuli;
they do not live in a vacuum. The potentially disruptive influence of these events makes
decay theory impossible to prove. But even if such events are interfering, they do not
rule out the possibility of decay.
Benjamin's memory loss, if explained on the basis of interference theory, would
involve retroactive inhibition. Since the original learning took place so early in life,
there was little chance of proactive inhibition. Instead, all sorts of learning activities
after infancy could have exerted a disruptive influence.
Research on Interference Theory In proactive and retroactive inhibition, the
interference might involve a storage problem, due to the intervening activities, and it
might be a retrieval problem, in which the wrong cues are used. Either or both
circumstances could result in incorrect responses or none at all.
Since the 1930s, when Harold Burtt began his study, interference theory has
held a special attraction for experimental psychologists. Of all of the theories of forgetting,
it continues to be the most stimulating for research, and contemporary laboratory
investigations have been highly precise. However, there have been relatively few
attempts to study the concepts of interference theory in everyday affairs, including
business, education, and other applied areas.
Figure 9.15
Activity and Relearning. The
inactive animals showed higher
savings scores. Note also the
similarity between these curves and
those for active and inactive human
beings (Minami & Dallenbach, 1946).
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