Specific-Pair Interference on Recall and Associative-Matching Retention Tests

Abstract

One version of the interference theory of forgetting (McGovern, 1964) predicts that specific original-learning associations should be unlearned whenever identical stimuli have different responses in successive, interpolated-learning, lists--the AB-AC paradigm. But such specific associative effects have yet to be unequivocally demonstrated (Bogartz, 1965; Ceraso, 1964, Ceraso and Tendler, 1968), and continued failure to obtain them may well demand a revision of interference theory. For example, Postman has recently offered a view of retroactive inhibition, similar to an earlier position (Newton and Wickens, 1956), which emphasizes generalized interlist response competition, rather than individual stimulus-response interference (Postman and Stark, 1969; Postman, Stark, and Fraser, 1968). Melton (1961) has outlined an attack on the question of specific associative unlearning as follows: (a) devise an interpolatedlearning mixed list on which some original-learning pairs have corresponding pairs while others do not (an AB-AC/DC list, which in effect combines the AB-AC and AB-DC paradigms); then (b) following that interpolated learning, performance on a test of original-learning retention should be superior for the AB items in the AB-DC paradigm while the AB items in the AB-AC paradigm should show the effects of specific associative unlearning. The