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Proactive interference, accessibility bias, and process dissociations: valid subjective reports of memory.

L L Jacoby1, J A Debner, J F Hay

  • 1Department of Psychology, Washington University, St Louis, Missouri 63130, USA. lljacoby@artsci.wustl.edu

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition
|June 8, 2001
PubMed
Summary

Proactive interference stems from response bias, not impaired memory. This bias affects habit but not recollection, with age impacting recollection ability.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Human Memory
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Proactive interference (PI) is a common memory phenomenon where prior learning hinders new learning.
  • Existing theories debate whether PI arises from response bias or impaired memory processes.
  • The process-dissociation procedure offers a method to disentangle memory components like habit and recollection.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the underlying mechanisms of proactive interference using a variant of the process-dissociation procedure.
  • To differentiate the roles of habit (accessibility bias) and recollection (discriminability) in PI.
  • To examine how factors like divided attention, age, study duration, and training probability influence these memory components.

Main Methods:

  • Conducted three cued-recall experiments employing a modified process-dissociation procedure.

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  • Manipulated variables including divided attention, participant age, study duration, and training probability.
  • Measured both objective estimates of recollection and discriminability, and subjective reports of remembering.

    • Main Results:

    • Proactive interference was consistently demonstrated to be an effect of accessibility bias (habit), not a deficit in recollection.
    • Divided attention, age, and study duration selectively impacted the recollection parameter.
    • Training probability selectively influenced the habit parameter, while subjective memory reports strongly correlated with objective recollection estimates.

    Conclusions:

    • The findings support the view that proactive interference is primarily a bias effect, impacting response accessibility rather than true memory recall.
    • Age-related susceptibility to interference may stem from diminished recollection abilities, rather than solely from impaired response inhibition.
    • The process-dissociation procedure provides a valuable tool for dissecting memory components and understanding individual differences in memory performance.