ATTENUATION OF PROACTIVE INTERFERENCE IN SHORT-TERM MEMORY AS A FUNCTION OF CUEING TO FORGET

Exp. I (N = 60 undergraduates) showed that cueing S on certain trials not to remember the items he was encoding produced a significant reduction in proactive interference. In Exp. II (N = 60 undergraduates) S was cued on certain trials not to recall the item he had previously encoded and stored. This manipulation did not significantly reduce proactive interference although the direction of the difference between the experimental and control conditions was the same as in Exp. I. Results suggest that the act of responding to, or encoding, an item does not of itself determine the interference potential of that item in a short-term memory test series. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.