Recalling some items from a category makes related but unpractised items harder to recall later than if nothing had been practised.
Anderson and colleagues showed in 1994 that retrieval is not neutral: pulling one memory forward actively suppresses its competitors. Practising half the items from a category left the unpractised half worse recalled than items from categories nobody practised at all. Remembering, in other words, has a cost paid by the neighbours of what is remembered.
In practice
- A witness repeatedly questioned about one detail becomes less able to recall the rest of the scene.
- A revision session on four topics leaves the other six worse off than not revising at all.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- A century and a half of measuring the mind