Interference theory (Forgetting-psychology)

                In everyday life, human’s brain receives many information from the surrounding with input from the sensory organs. However not all input will be recorded in the brain. Some of the inputs will be stored in the short term memory and some others probably will be retained in the long term memory. Whereas most of the input information or sensory will be unregistered in the memory system and surely will be forgotten. Once people want to recall the information that has been stored on their memory, sometimes they will experience forgetting. There are some theories which explain about how people fail to recall information into present consciousness. Those are theories of trace decay, displacement, interference and lack of consolidation. Here, this writing will focus on how memory is failed to recall based on interference theory. According to Baddeley (1999) as cited in the website named simply psychology (2008), stated that Interference theory explains that forgetting occurs because memories interfere with and disrupt one another, in other words forgetting occurs because of interference from other memories. (McLeod, 2008). In addition, interference happens when information get confused with other information in the long term memory. Some memories interfere and compete with other memories, and that memory loss occurs when information stored either before or after a given memory hinders the capability to remember it. Basically, signs for different memories probably too similar so a wrong memory gets retrieved (forgetting, n.d.)

                As cited in the tutor2u website (2015) Ellie Willard wrote that there are two types of interference. Those are retroactive interference and proactive interference. The retroactive interference happens when more recent information gets in the way of trying to recall older information. For instance when you want call the name of your ex-boyfriend/ by your new boyfriend’s name. The new name retroactively interferes with the old one, which is clearly problematic for recall. On the other hand, proactive interference is the reverse direction of interference to retroactive interference. It happens when the old information prevents the recall of newer information. As an example, the case with telephone numbers. When someone trying to recall a new phone number, the old phone number you have previously had for years could proactively interfere with the recall, to the point when it is very difficult to remember the new number. (Willard, 2015)

References

forgetting. (n.d.). Retrieved from the peak performance center: http://thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/learning/memory/forgetting/

McLeod, S. (2008). Forgetting. Retrieved from simplypsychology: https://www.simplypsychology.org/forgetting.html

Willard, E. (2015). Psychology. Retrieved from Tutor2u: https://www.tutor2u.net/psychology/reference/proactive-and-retroactive-interference