Author: nak5407

Proactive and Retroactive Interference Blog Post 2

Before I begin to talk about pro and retro active interference, everyone should know what interference is. The psychological definition of interference is, ” a phenomenon of human memory involving the learning of how material where the learning of new information or behavior interacts with old learning, or memories, thoughts and behaviors that come from past learning, and interferes with the acquisition or comprehension of new information”. With this being said, there are two types of interference, proactive and retroactive.  Proactive interference is when things that someone has learned in the past gets in the way of, or disrupts what you are currently trying to learn.  On the other hand, retroactive interference is forgetting something learned in the past due to something that is being learned or recently learned.  Both proactive, and retroactive interference typically happens due to similar events, tasks, or memories.  All of this sums up what proactive and retroactive interference is.

Now knowing what these two types of interference are, I want to share some personal examples of how interference occurs in real life. The first instance occurred in math class a few weeks ago.  The class was beginning to learn about solving two equations consisting of multiple variables. Having learned how to solve these in the past, I always used the substitution method for solving the equations.  As I sat there in class and listened to my professor, I noticed that we were not learning how to solve the equations using the substitution method, but instead the elimination method. As I tried to learn this new way of solving the equations, my mind kept going back to the substitution method and how I solve them that way. I now know that this is a prime example of proactive interference. Another example of interference occurred to me two weeks ago. I was studying for my second biology exam of the semester and was reading over my notes from class.  I began to skip and glance over material that I thought I already knew from earlier in my education.  Then when me and my friends where testing each other I began to forget old material because I was so focused on the current material.  This is an example of retroactive interference. These two examples show how these two interference present themselves in everyday life.

Selective Attention

I want to open by introducing what selective attention is and how everyone experiences this daily. Without an explanation of what selective attention is, my story later in this blog will leave you perplexed and with questions.  Selective attention is “the capacity for or process of reacting to certain stimuli selectively when several occur simultaneously”. It is the process of attending to one or a few sensory inputs as there are millions around you that you ignore. A simple example of this is someone who drives and has other distractions all around them. There focus is the road, but the light is on in the backseat, there are other cars beeping at the, and their phone is ringing. All those things that are occurring around you as the driver are sensory inputs. Selective attention allows people to focus on the most important sensory input as in this instance, the road.

 

Another way to look at Selective attention is by thinking about what we know and what we don’t know. As expressed by Dr. Wede in class, the mind can only process so fast and store so much.  People receive information in so many ways all the time and probably don’t even realize to the extent that it comes. Information can come from speech, lights, other random sounds, movement, and more. Selective attention gives our minds the ability to take in the important information or what we as the person getting the attention want. This is all due to that fact that we as humans can not take all information in that we receive in multiple ways.

 

Now that you know about selective attention from what I have said above, my personal experience with selective attention will make much more sense. A couple of weeks ago me and my girlfriend were watching tv together. As we were watching she started to talk to me, and at that time I was focused on the show and not so much her as bad as that sounds. Well she continued to talk as I continued to watch until she asked a question and I gave no response. Of course, she knew that I was not listening to her directly when I gave no response. Later that evening she got her revenge.  She pulled a prank on me by telling me that she had to leave Penn State to go home because of a family issue and that she tried to explain this to me earlier.  At the earlier time my selective attention was focused on the television and not her, and that is why I did not hear her talking earlier in the day.  This is my personal experience with selective attention and how people see this every day.  Below is a link to a cartoon video of selective attention to help you further understand.

https://study.com/academy/lesson/selective-attention-definition-examples-quiz.html

 

Sources

Cherry, K. (2019, May 6). How We Use Selective Attention to Filter Information and Focus. Retrieved from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-selective-attention-2795022