Interference And Short Term Memory

11 Pages 2637 Words

mation. The capacity of short-term memory is limited and can only hold a small amount of information. Miller (1956) presented the idea that short-term memory could only hold 5-9 chunks of information (seven plus or minus two) where a chunk is any meaningful unit. An item usually remains in short-term memory, unless it was rehearsed, for only an average of 20- to 30-sec. Long term memory is the component of memory that holds knowledge and skills for a relatively long period of time, from a few minutes to potentially a lifetime, and has no known limit on how much it can hold.
There are three main theories as to why we forget. Among the three, Keppel & Underwood’s (1962) theory on interference, when one set of information impairs the acquisition or retention of another set of information has been the most studied. Pellegrino (1976) examined the effect of different types of distraction tasks and the length of the delays had on recall of a list. Subjects in the study were presented with either a word or picture, and were then distracted by the acoustic (counting form a particular number) or acoustic + visual distraction (counting backwards while trying to locate the shape of a nonlabelable structure from a matrix of confusing lines). The results showed that recall of pictures were greater for the acoustic, whereas the acoustic + visual distraction task together, word recall was significantly different. Pictures were superior to words at all delay intervals under single acoustic distraction, whereas dual distraction consistently reduced picture retention while simultaneously facilitating word retention.
Peterson and Peterson (1959) reported a study on short-term retention of individual verbal items. In this study the results of two identical experiments with the exception of a few delay were reported. Both experiments examined the progress of retention after the brief presentation of an item. The subjects were presented wi...