Fact retrieval and the paradox of interference

Abstract

Many theories of memory incorporate the notion of retrieval interference, which says that facts learned about the same concept can interfere with one another during retrieval. This notion implies that the more facts learned about a concept the greater the retrieval interference. But this makes it paradoxical how one ever becomes knowledgeable about a topic. To resolve this paradox, we argue that one can overcome interference by using relevant world knowledge to integrate various facts learned about a concept. Three experiments demonstrate that integration can overcome interference. All used a recognition paradigm developed by Anderson and Bower 1973. Subjects first memorized a set of facts about particular people (e.g., Marly, the banker), and then decided whether or not test sentences were from the memorized set. Experiments 1 and 2 manipulated (a) the number of facts learned about a particular person and (b) whether or not they were integrated. With unintegrated facts, the time to recognize a test sentence increased with the number of facts learned about the person mentioned in that sentence; with integrated facts, no such increase was found. Experiment 3 further showed that subjects had difficulty rejecting distractors that were thematically related to integrated facts. To account for these effects, two hypotheses were considered, one an alteration of Anderson and Bower's HAM model, and the other an elaboration of Schank and Abelson's 1977 script analysis.