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= Associative Interference = Associative interference is a cognitive theory established on the concept of associative learning, which suggests that the brain links related elements. When one element is stimulated, its associates can also be activated. The most known study demonstrating the credibility of this concept was Pavlov’s experiment in 1927 which was later developed into the learning procedure known as classical conditioning.

However, whilst classical conditioning and associative learning both explore how the brain utilises this cognitive association to benefit us, studies have also shown how the brain can mistakenly associate related, but incorrect elements together, and this is known as associative interference. A simple example of this would be when one was asked a series of multiplication questions. A study conducted in 1985 showed that over 90% of the mistakes subjects made actually answers to other questions which had a common factor. That is, questions such as 4 x 6 = 24 and 3 x 8 = 24 were very likely to promote errors (8 x 4 = 24) due to associative interference.

Associative interference was widely investigated and researchers realised there were different types of interference, namely retroactive interference which investigates how new memories disrupts the retrieval of old memories, and proactive interference which investigates how old memories disrupts the retrieval of new memories. These two were subsequently associated together to create the interference theory.

Therefore, associative interference is a fundamental theory which the interference theory draws upon. The essential difference between these two is time. Both retroactive and proactive interference are concerned with when the interfering elements, or memories were obtained. However, associative interference does not encompass time, as shown by the previous example. The chronological acquisition of the four times table in relation to the three times table is independent as to why subjects made an error, highlighting the difference between the two.

History
Interference in experimental literature has been a topic of interest for psychologists for over 100 years, with early studies dating back to the 1890. Hugo Münsterberg was among the first to study this concept by recording the effects of altering some of his daily routines, such as dipping his pen in ink and taking his watch out of his pocket. He concluded that by associating the stimulus (what’s the time?) with a response (taking out pocket watch), both the stimulus and response have equal likelihood to trigger automatic retrieval if the other was encountered. That is, taking out a pocket watch (response) would often trigger the action of checking the time (stimulus) even if the supposed action was something different, such as taking out the watch and placing it on the table.

Georg E. Müller and Friedrich Schumann later developed a study in 1894 researching stimuli recall. By making subjects learn a series of words comprised of nonsense syllables, it was found that if an association formed between syllables 1 and 2, it was harder for subjects to associate syllable 1 with syllable 3. The phenomenon was subsequently termed the law of associative inhibition. This paved the way for future studies as many psychologists utilised a similar experimental procedure of preparing a series of stimuli for subjects to recognise and/or recall to investigate the effects of interference.

Over the course of the 19th and 20th century, various psychologists entered the field of interference study and designed their experiments with unique stimuli. John A. Bergström and many others began working with card sorting, while Linus W. Kline used stimuli which were designed to be more recognisable for subjects such as states, capitals and book titles. In the end, it was concluded that as long as the subject’s brain had formed associations with the experiment stimuli, regardless of what form or shape the stimuli took interference could occur.

Effect on recall
Many studies have concluded that associative interference reduces a subject’s ability to recall. In 1925, Erwin A. Esper presented subjects with a series of random shapes with different colours. In total there were 4 different shapes and 4 colours, creating 16 possible shape-colour combinations.

Each combination was then assigned a nonsensical name which followed the same rule. The first half of the name would be a syllable corresponding to its colour, whilst the second half would be a syllable corresponding to its shape. For example, the colour red would correspond to the syllable “nas”, whilst the first shape type would correspond to the syllable “lin”, creating the name “naslin” for that specific combination. By presenting these combinations alongside their names to subjects to remember throughout the length of the study, they were subsequently tested by being asked to recall the name of each randomly presented combination.

The results of this study found that in cases where subjects made a mistake, a common pattern emerged. Using the previous colour-shape combination as an example, when it was presented, one participant’s response was “nasden”. This response seemed to be an amalgamation of “naslin” the correct answer, and the word “nasdeg” which interestingly was a name assigned to another colour-shape combination with a different shape, but also in red. This occurrence whereby the stimulus and its similar associate forms a variant were seen for other combinations as well and indicates the presence of associative interference.

Similar trends can be seen in other studies. Alison M. Dyne and her peers designed a similar experiment, however instead of colours and shapes, word pairs were used to investigate whether overlapping words from different pairs would result in associative interference during recall.

Participants were introduced to a study list with word pairs randomly sampled from a word pool which they were subsequently tested on. The pairs that were chosen consisted of a mix of ones which had unique words (where both words did not appear in any other pair on the list), and ones which had overlapping words (where one or both words appeared in other pairs on the list). They were then given one half of the word-pair, and asked to recall and write down the corresponding word for that specific pair. As hypothesised, associative interference hindered many of the participant’s recall ability, as participant’s were much more likely to make a mistake in recalling overlapping word pairs.

Effect on recognition
Whilst associative interference has shown to reduce recall performance, its effects on recognition remain inconsistent.

In the previous study, participants were also tested for recognition, by providing a similar test list with interference inducing word pairs and non-interference word pairs. However, this time certain pairs from both categories were rearranged, and participants were asked to circle the pairs they thought remained the same. Surprisingly, there was no significant result to indicate the sign of associative interference as both the miss and accuracy rate increased under interference conditions as opposed to the recall experiment.

Michael F. Verde conducted a similar study in 2004 to further investigate how recognition is affected by interference. In his experimental method, participants were also subject to word pairs, however this time in the form of “the person is in the location”. Participants were tested in a similar manner to the previous study by being asked if the tested pair were rearranged or not. After noting the lack of any significant results to Dyne et. al.’s study, Verde then introduced a new factor, the concept of familiarity. Despite the results of the recognition test not showing signs of interference, he predicted that interference conditions would increase participant’s familiarity to the word pairs.

As such, a second experiment was conducted whose method was almost identical to the first. However this time instead of presenting participants with some word pairs which were rearranged, word pairs which contained words not present in the study list were added to the test list. Participants were then asked if the tested word pairs contained novel words not yet seen to investigate how familiarity affects recognition under interference and non-interference conditions. This resulted in an increase in recognition rate under interference conditions compared to the first experiment, suggesting that familiarity is a contributor to recognition performance while under the influence of associative interference.