Interference in Psychology

Psychologist Dr. Doping tells about associative theory, the mechanisms of remembering and switching between tasks. Why is the phenomenon of interference is important for all areas of psychology theories? How is memorization of words and skills? As the effect of proactive interference effect on the results of psychological research?

The interference generally means inter-suppression opponent processes, optionally in psychology, and in general in the language. Everyone knows about the interference in physics, interference wave processes, but it turned out that something similar is in psychology, the behavior of humans and animals. The essence of the phenomenon lies in the fact that if the skills or memorize words with short intervals after each other, as if they interfere with each other, that is less then the playback or both, either one of them.

The interference phenomenon was first shown in 1894, Muller and Schumann. But more famous work of 1900, in which Muller and Piltseker introduced the concept of consolidation, and they entered it because of the phenomenon of interference. They varied the interval between jobs, and it turned out that the first list of words forgotten, if the time interval between the lists of words a little, and do not forget, if the interval between the lists of words big.

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I would like to tell you about the interference, as a phenomenon, which is used in almost any theory in any psychological concept. The appearance of interference in psychology has been done within the framework of the associative psychology, and further, after these studies, there was a two-factor theory, which suggests that, in addition to gain some links towards other, there is the weakening of ties, but it is not us it is very important. I want to show that every time there is some kind of an idea, such as cognitive psychology, the phenomenon of interference it always will be, it will be applied to new approaches.

Also as part of the associative psychology appeared idea of reciprocal inhibition by Charles Osgood, and it is assumed that when a person learns a word, this strengthening of association suppresses the opposite in the sense of an association, that is, there is a real drag. And, by the way, interference then called retroactive inhibition. Retroactive means "acting ago", that is, when I learn something new, I forget something previous.

After this, there is evidence, contrary to the theory of associative, and they concluded that the elements that have a strong associative links, such as the still remembered - it was a contradiction. And in the framework of cognitive science we have already used the notion that, apparently, forgotten or remembered words and whole sets of selection of these sets is carried out by some additional process - control, the executive, in short, the highest in relation to the associative.

And then Mueller and Piltseker suggested the existence of a certain reverberation mechanism, which suggests that when we start something to remember this information as it is spinning in our heads, so repeated and gradually memorized. If this process is interrupted by a new instruction, then the first memory is disturbed. But this assumption was forgotten almost 40 years due to the fact that I won another theory, the theory of the responses of competition - it purely associative. Then she began to develop in the two-factor theory, then there was the theory of reciprocal inhibition by Charles Osgood. This way interference within the association was productive of psychology, but at some point it became clear that certain data do not stick together, they do not correspond to each other.

The first contradiction noticed Benton Underwood, who has shown that the more a person spends on the experiments, the worse its results by the end of the experiment.

Thus, it showed the presence of proactive interference. It looks like exhaustion, that is, the farther away, the less memory. But it is not only this, but the fact is that the more prior information we have memorized, the worse we remember the follow. This effect is called the effect of proactive interference, that is, acting as if the future ahead. It was thus discovered later. And in this regard, by the way, we introduced a requirement naive subjects in psychology. That is the person at the time when the experiment is conducted, should anything about this experiment is not to know and not to do anything similar to this experiment. Because if we perform the same series of twenty, we can not consider the results of the twentieth as well as the first.

At some point, the associative theory has ceased to work in relation to the results of these studies, because it turned out that the elements which are associatively had to have a weak effect, still be played, one remembers them. And they make assumptions about what the elements are stored not one, that is, the association is not a single element, and the elements are stored some sets. And the choice of these sets is carried out by means of special mechanisms selector, or executive, as it was later called in cognitive psychology. This idea that the elements are stored not one, but a set can be considered the beginning of the era of cognitive as it is called by Michael Anderson. And in it, and in other studies this theme began to develop, and to material interference also began to study the control or executive processes that cognitive psychology assumed.

In this regard, other effects were found out which were identified contextual interference and interference output, or output interference. This interconnected effects, they are, in fact, describe: the way we reproduce the information, depending on what it was before, and what kind of problems we were doing before. Also, the output of interference effect is that the more we reproduce elements, remember, the less likely play an item, that is, as if we are being depleted with time.

These experiments have grown in popularity in the 2010s and subsequent years the theme of forgetting associated with recovery from memory. The phenomenon is that if a person is remembered for a word, the less likely that it will reproduce the words of the same category. For example, if you remembered the orange fruit, the less likely you are to remember the following job kiwi, pineapple and some more fruit. It turns out that once again the interference as a phenomenon appeared in the new field of research that can examine this categorization or any other things.

In 40-ies of experiments on memory consolidation started already neurophysiological, and this theory is also remembered in connection with studies and the concept of Donald Hebb. And at the moment, an interference phenomenon is widely used in studies of memory consolidation.

On the other hand, the phenomenon of interference is also involved in the switching studies. Switch - a change of activity, and noted that if we dramatically change one activity to another, the previous activity as it has a certain inertia, it prevents us from first to perform new actions. Switching Research in Russia held a group of Anna Leonova, and is known from the literature and experiments, is switching from one case to another may deprive us of 18% of the time compared to the way we do this alone business without having to switch to on one another. Therefore, this issue is very important, and including in practice. And it is also assumed that this involved switching processes related to interference, that is, they interfere with each other due to the fact that these activities are close to each other.

It turns out that, no matter what the concept of creating a memory cell or some other psychological structures, it is always possible to use the interference effect.

Because of their interaction and their impact on each other, perhaps because of their similarity or proximity in time always. And I think that at the present time, that is, in the 2010s, and in the future, actual use for research, including interference phenomenon, first, ideas developed in the theory of activity, and secondly, the ideas developed in the framework of theory of functional systems and system-evolutionary approach.

That is, in order to analyze what kind of connection or interaction between memory elements, or any other psychological structures, it is important to investigate their formation in development in some real activity using several tasks that a person or animal is trained. And so it will be possible to use the phenomenology of interference in order to operate with such categories as action, such as the theory of activity, or to consider the interaction of different systemogenesis, as postulated in the system-evolutionary approach. In my opinion, this is the most promising.