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Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Cognitive Psychology: Types of Interference and Fan Effect

 

Introduction:

Interference is one theory to explain how and why forgetting occurs in  long -term memory. Interference is a memory phenomenon in which some memories interfere with the retrieval of other memories.

Types of Interference:

There are two basic types of interference:

·         Proactive interference

·         Retroactive interference

Retroactive interference:

Retroactive interference refers to the tendency for new learning to inhibit retrieval of old learning. The sleeping college students remembered more because retroactive interference was held to a minimum.

Proactive interference:

Proactive interference, the second form of interference, is the tendency for old memories to interfere with the retrieval of newer memories.

Fan Effects:

The fan effect is a psychological phenomenon under the branch of cognitive psychology where recognition times or error rate for a particular concept increases as more information about the concept is acquired. The word “fan” refers to the number of associations correlated with the concept.

The origin of fan effects:

The fan effect first appeared in a series of experiments conducted by John R. Anderson, a cognitive psychologist, in 1974. The three experiments he conducted involved participants learning 26 sentences that paired a person with a location. Additionally, they were asked to determine whether or not a particular sentence that was given to them belonged to the 26 they were asked to study. An example of a sentence Anderson used in his experiment was: “A hippie is in the park.

Implications of fan effects:

·         Cognitive Load: Fan effects suggest that memory retrieval is subject to cognitive load. As the number of related items increases, the cognitive load associated with retrieving the target information also increases. This has implications for tasks that require memory retrieval under high cognitive load, such as decision making or problem solving. It highlights the importance of managing cognitive load to optimize cognitive performance.

·         Semantics network: The fan effects is consistent with the idea of semantic network in memory. According to this theory related concepts are organized in a network like structure in memory. When multiple related items are active the retrieval process becomes more complex as the activation spreads across the network, increasing the difficulty of accessing a specific target item.

Conclusion: interference and fan effects play significant roles in cognitive psychology, specifically in the realm of memory and information processing. Interference can impair memory recall by introducing competition or similarity between information, while the fan effects demonstrate how the organization and complexity of cognitive network affect the retrieval of information. Understanding these phenomena can help researchers, education and individual optimize memory performance and develop effective learning strategies.

 

 Reference

·         https://www.verywellmind.com/interference-definition-4587808

·         https://images.app.goo.gl/XmYDTUr1eHYikBj58

·         https://www.ifioque.com/psyche/interference

·         https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_effect

·         https://chat.openai.com/?model=text-davinci-002-render-sha

 

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