At the party last night, you thought that you had remembered the names of all the people there. But today, you realize that you’ve forgotten half of them. You attribute this to interference in short-term memory. What might lead you to this conclusion?
A. you have had retrograde amnesia before
B. a lot of the people had names that sounded the same, e.g., Jo, Flow and Mo
C. you were preoccupied with other things on your mind
D. you only had about 3 minutes to memorize each name
E. a lot of the people had names that meant the same, e.g., Beth, Elizabeth, Liz
The correct answer and explanation is:
The correct answer is B. a lot of the people had names that sounded the same, e.g., Jo, Flow and Mo.
Interference in short-term memory happens when similar pieces of information compete with each other, making it harder to recall specific details. When many names sound alike, the brain struggles to differentiate between them, causing confusion and forgetting. This is a classic example of proactive or retroactive interference in memory. Proactive interference occurs when old information interferes with new learning, while retroactive interference happens when new information makes it difficult to remember previously learned information.
In the case of the party, if many names sound similar, this similarity causes interference because the brain has difficulty keeping distinct memory traces for each name. This results in forgetting or mixing up names.
Option A, retrograde amnesia, is a condition where a person loses memories formed before a traumatic event. This is unrelated to the everyday memory interference experienced here.
Option C, being preoccupied, relates more to attention and encoding failure, meaning the information was never properly stored, rather than interference causing forgetting.
Option D, having only 3 minutes to memorize each name, involves limited time and possibly inadequate rehearsal, but does not specifically describe interference.
Option E, having names with similar meanings, is less relevant to interference in short-term memory, since memory confusion mainly occurs due to similarity in sound or appearance, not meaning.
In summary, when many items in short-term memory are similar in sound, interference makes it difficult to recall each distinct piece of information. This is why forgetting half the names at the party, given many sound alike, points to interference as the cause.