User:IHChu/sandbox

It is suggested that Retroactive interference is a facilitating mechanism that has adapted to organize and update memories within a narrow time interval.

Revising Retroactive Interference
I am planning to be focusing on adding more research studies regarding Retroactive Interference involved with different topics, such as difference between genders or effect of retroactive interference on infants. I will also be adding onto Theory of Retroactive interference section to try to give the readers a better understanding what is the cause of retroactive interference and how it can possibly play a vital adaptive role in memory formation.

The revised article will first briefly define Retroactive Interference and give some classical examples of the phenomenons to give the readers a understanding of how the Interference theory works. Then some emphasis on Important classical studies section will be given to elaborate on more about the findings of 2 classical studies. Secondly, the Theory of Retroactive Interference section needs little revision for its clumped orientation. Also, a picture of left anterior ventral prefrontal cortex by magnetoencephalography (MEG)would be a asset to help the readers to understand which exact section of the brain is involved with Retroactive Interference. And thirdly, I will be adding on some more researches regarding Retroactive interference to the "Research Concerning Retroactive Interference" Section to give the readers a more clear understanding on how the phenomenon applies to other factors such as Infants, Ethnicity, Culture and Genders. Then I will cover on some criticisms and implications of the findings for my final section.

Final Copy of Wikipedia Article
The sections that are blank are sections that I left out and did not add or edit, Please ignore sections that are blank in the Final copy of Wikipedia Article.

Retroactive Interference
Retroactive Interference (RI) is a type of Interference in which information that is learned later interferes with pre-existing information that has been learned beforehand. Under Retroactive Interference, individual’s ability to recall previously learned information is heavily impaired by interference caused by two conflicting information that is inconsistent of one another. Retroactive Interference is a concept that was originally termed by Georg Elias Müller, who was a famous experimental Psychologist of German Descent.

Retroactive Interference process can be understood by referring to the diagram on the right. Polar opposite of Proactive Interference, Retroactive Interference is a process where the newly formed memories actively interferes with pre-existing memories that result in impaired ability to recall memories. Proactive Interference is a process where pre-existing memories actively interferes with newly formed memories that result in impaired ability to recall memories.

A example of realistic Retroactive Interference is when a Professor would have difficulty in remembering the names of former students because the Professor have learned names of new students and Professor’s ability to remember the name of his or her former students is heavily impaired. ]

Theories of Retroactive Interference
Retroactive Interference played a significant role in historical, ongoing debate in regard to how exactly memory is forgotten. Currently in field of memory research, There are two contrasting explanations of Retroactive Interference on how memories are forgotten. These two contrasting explanations of Retroactive Interference are Competition and Associative Unlearning. Competition explains Retroactive Interference occurs when newly perceived information is actively competing with pre-existing inconsistent information while Associative Unlearning explains Retroactive Interference occurs when newly acquired memory completely replaces the initial memory and the initial memory is lost forever. Currently, there is no clear evidence that which approach of understanding how memory is forgotten is correct or most supported, Retroactive Interference is an important concept required to understood the underlying processes of exactly how memory is forgotten.

Competition
A Theory of Retroactive interference that proposes newly acquired information competes with pre-existing information that is inconsistent and eventually, triumphs over older information, resulting in high difficulty in remembering pre-existed information.

An example that provides support for Competition approach is when a study was conducted to examine the memory of language acquisition. When individual comes across second set of unknown foreign language after allowing first set of unknown foreign language to be memorized under limited time duration, high level of Retroactive interference is observed but participants of the study was able to successfully recall some of the first set of foreign language while unable to successfully recall some of the second set of foreign language.

Associative Unlearning
Associative Unlearning Hypothesis explains Retroactive Interference as a process where newly acquired association replaces the pre-existing association that is inconsistent with new information and participants forgets the pre-existing associations.

An example that provides support for Associative Unlearning approach was conducted by Barnes and Underwood. Through the investigation of the study, the first list of associations "A i -B i " gradually decreased in reproduction while the second list of associations "A i -C i " gradually increased in reproduction. Barnes and Underwood explained that this phenomenon couldn't be mere cause of random forgetting because it was compared to a control group, and proposed the findings of the study supports the Associative Unlearning hypothesis over Competition.

Brain Structures
] Examination of Brain pattern through the use of magnetoencephalography(MEG) revealed Retroactive Inference was heavily localized to the left anterior ventral prefrontal cortex region. Also, activation of Posterior frontal region was negatively correlated with occurrence of Retroactive Interference, meaning the higher and longer the level of activation in Posterior frontal region, the less likely the interference between new memory and old memory to occur. By referring to the diagrams illustrated beside, regions of left anterior ventral prefrontal cortex and posterior frontal region are vital structures of the Brain where Retroactive Inference is localized.

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Difference Between Gender
Some researches have been conducted to investigate whether Retroactive interference generates differential recall for male and female. Equal number of male and female college students were asked to study a list of pair of words and to perform a recall task after. The findings of the study reports that Retroactive interference along with Proactive interference generated a differential recall effects where female college students were reported to have superior recall ability under Interference conditions compared to male college students who performed better in recall task than female students under no interference condition. The Findings suggest that male is more susceptible to interference relative to females. It is attributed that in overall, male’s inhibitory control system is relatively inefficient than female’s inhibitory control system. When Inhibitory control system is inefficient, irrelevant new information cannot be stopped from competing with pre-existing relevant memory for the focus of attention. Other studies provided support for this assertion by showing how women’s Semantics development was more advanced than men and that women demonstrated better in verbal skills compared to men. However, supportive as this proposition may be, it is heavily criticized for it’s lack of explanation on why male participants performed better in non interference condition compared to female participants or why female participants did worse than male under no interference condition. Mefoh (2010) emphasizes more future research of interference theory that focuses on gender differences is needed.

Retroactive Interference in Infants
It was once debated that Retroactive interference was a significant source of Childhood amnesia. However previous studies dismissed this claim and demonstrated that Retroactive interference was only temporary when researchers of the study studied Infant’s susceptibility to retroactive interference and reported retroactive interference was unrelated to exposure delay of novel stimuli and was consistent with the Infant’s memory updating. These findings suggests that Retroactive interference does not play a significant role in Childhood amnesia and researchers of this study proposed that instead, Retroactive interference is not a error of memory encoding but a adaptive mechanism that facilitates memory updating. In this evolutionary approach in understanding Retroactive Interference, it is suggested that Retroactive interference increases efficiency of memories by reducing the need to form entirely new memories through updating pre-existing memories with new information that is consistent with ever changing world.

Cheslock, Sanders and Spear demonstrated through newborn lab rats that newborn forms a special resistance to retroactive interference after it’s first meal where newborn learned to associate a specific odour to a specific taste. 3 hour old newborn lab rats and 1 day old newborn lab rats were subjected to a lemon odour before they were given saccharine or quinine to taste. When the baby lab rats were initially given saccharine, quinine was given in the second feeding and if infant lab rats were initially given quinine then saccharine was given for second feeding. 1 day old rats had high retroactive interference when they were given second feeding; 3 hour old newborn rat’s memory was not affected by the second feeding and showed very little retroactive interference. The only differing variable between 1 day old rats and 3 hour newborn rats was that initial experimental feeding was 3 hour newborn rat’s first meal after it’s birth while 1 day old rats have already had experience of feeding before the experiment. Researchers of the studies argue that newborn rats had a special resistance to retroactive interference and was prepared to learn odour-taste associations from it’s first meal. This phenomenon would explain the newborn rat’s ability to locate its mother just from following the odour of her nipples. Cheslock, Sanders and Spear expressed high level of interest in conducting this study using samples of naïve human newborns and experienced human newborns to examine if special resistance to retroactive interference exists within human newborns.

Age
Children’s susceptibility to Retroactive interference was examined and whether the effects of age and degree of learning influenced the susceptibility was investigated. Group of 4 year olds and 7 year olds was randomly selected to examine the effect of age and the two different groups of children were randomly either participating in playing a game only 1 time or 3 times to examine the effect of degree of learning. Then the groups of children were either rested or asked to play another game that is inconsistent with the first game. 3 weeks later, children’s memory was assessed to see how much they remember playing the first game. Overall in general, 7 year old was more accurate than 4 year old in recalling the event, however both groups of 4 year old children and 7 year old children were significantly susceptible to Retroactive interference. Children who played the first game 3 times reported higher accuracy in recalling the event than children who played the first game only 1 time. But degree of learning did not have significant effect on susceptibility of retroactive interference among children. The findings of this study imply that for children, the age and degree of learning had no significant effect on susceptibility to Retroactive interference.

Effect of Retroactive Interference was studied to see if under the retroactive interference condition, the performance of Working memory(WM) task differed between young adults and old adults. 28 Young adults that ranged from 19 to 35 years and 23 older adults that ranged from 56-75 years were assigned to two different conditions of Retroactive Interference, the interrupting condition and distracting condition. Under these two experimental conditions of Retroactive interference, participants were asked to perform Working memory(WM) task while their brain patterns was examined with magnetoencephalography(MEG). The study reports that both type of Retroactive interference conditions significantly impaired the performance of working memory tasks of old adults relative to performance of working memory tasks of young adults. Young adult’s MEG pattern reported higher level of activation in Posterior frontal region of the brain, relative to the MEG patterns of older adults. Researchers of this study suggests that posterior frontal region of the brain plays a role in suppressing irrelevant new information from competing with pre-existing relevant information. As individuals get older, activity level of posterior frontal region is eventually decreased, which leads to increase in vulnerability to interference and competition between pre-existing memory and interference occur. Other studies that focuses on age differential variables regarding Retroactive Interference reported similar findings that implies as people gradually age, they become more susceptible and vulnerable to the interferences between new memory and old memory and ability to recall specific memory becomes heavily impaired