Interference in spatial memory

Four experiments examined interference in human spatial memory. The first two tested for retroactive interference by varying the similarity between the interpolated task and the task that was learned originally. Retroactive interference was observed during relearning of a radial stylus maze and during relearning of the locations of pairs of playing cards in a concentration game. In the third and fourth experiments, proactive interference was tested during the relearning of the locations of pairs in a concentration game. Some proactive interference was observed when the number of proactive games was varied (Experiment 3), and substantial proactive interference was found when the similarity between the proactive and target tasks was the independent variable (Experiment 4). Although extensive evidence indicates that spatial memory differs from other types of memory, spatial memory is subject to interference effects, as are verbal memory, motor memory, visual discriminative memory in animals, and animal spatial memory.