Journal
JOURNAL OF MEMORY AND LANGUAGE
Volume 68, Issue 1, Pages 39-53Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2012.07.006
Keywords
Interference; Directed forgetting; Context change; Interpolated testing; Latency
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Proactive interference (PI) refers to the finding that memory for recently studied (target) information can be vastly impaired by the previous study of other (nontarget) information. PI can be reduced in a number of ways, for instance, by directed forgetting of the prior nontarget information, the testing of the prior nontarget information, or an internal context change before study of the target information. Here we report the results of four experiments, in which we demonstrate that all three forms of release from PI are accompanied by a decrease in participants' response latencies. Because response latency is a sensitive index of the size of participants' mental search set, the results suggest that release from PI can reflect more focused memory search, with the previously studied nontarget items being largely eliminated from the search process. Our results thus provide direct evidence for a critical role of retrieval processes in PI release. (c) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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