Evidence Against Inhibition in Memory
The idea that subjects can actively inhibit a memory has many critics. MacLeod (2003) challenged the idea of inhibition in cognitive control, arguing that inhibition can be attributed to conflict resolution, which is the error-prone act of choosing between two similar values that do not necessarily have the same pair. Re-examine the pairs from above: Food-Cracker, Food-Strawberry, Red-Tomato, and Red-Blood. Memory inhibition theories suggest that recall of strawberry decreases when recall of tomato decreases because tomato's attributes are inhibited when red-blood is learned. MacLeod argues that inhibition does not take place, but instead is the result of confusion between similar word-pairs like food-tomato and red-strawberry that can lead to errors. This is different than tomato's attributes being inhibited. “In most cases where inhibitory mechanisms have been offered to explain cognitive performance,” explains MacLeod, “non-inhibitory mechanisms can accomplish the same goal (p.203).”
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