History
Bergström, a German psychologist, is credited as conducting the first study regarding interference in 1892. His experiment was similar to the Stroop task and required subjects to sort two decks of card with words into two piles. When the location was changed for the second pile, sorting was slower, demonstrating that the first set of sorting rules interfered with learning the new set. German psychologists continued in the field with Georg Elias Müller and Pilzeker in 1900 studying retroactive interference. To the confusion of Americans at a later date, Müller used "associative Hemmung" (inhibition) as a blanket term for retroactive and proactive inhibition.
The next major advancement came from American psychologist Benton J. Underwood in 1915. Underwood found that as the number of lists learned increased, the retention of the last list learned decreased after 24 hours.
In 1924, James J. Jenkins and Dallenback showed that everyday experiences can interfere with memory with an experiment that resulted in retention being better over a period of sleep than over the same amount of time devoted to activity. The United States again made headway in 1932 with John A. McGeoch suggesting that decay theory should be replaced by an interference theory. The most recent major paradigm shift came when Underwood proposed that proactive inhibition is more important or meaningful than retroactive inhibition in accounting for forgetting.
Read more about this topic: Interference Theory
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)