Taste aversion is the concept that human beings have a tendency to have an aversive response towards certain foods that have made them sick before. I have experienced taste aversion when I was eight years old, and now my younger sister is experiencing it.

I was always nervous to try cheeseburgers when I was little because I had not particularly acquired a taste for cheese. The thought of burgers had also never really appealed to me. My family and I would always go to my grandparents’ house for dinner at least twice a week. It was a Wednesday night when we went this one time when I was in first grade. My grandmother was making hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and hot dogs. I always loved hot dogs, but I had not ever tried a cheeseburger. That night I decided to just go ahead and try one for the first time. Unfortunately, I got very sick after eating it and became extremely nauseous.

The next day, my mother told me that I had caught a stomach virus. She said that the virus was not from eating the cheeseburger, but I was convinced that this was the reasoning behind me getting sick. I could not get the thought out of my head that it was the cheeseburger that made me sick. Years later, I still could not stand the smell or sight of a cheeseburger. Whenever someone around me would eat or cook one I could not even sit near them. This was because of my taste aversion that I developed towards cheeseburgers. Finally, a few years ago I had a cheeseburger for the second time in my life. I discovered that I did not get sick that night because I ate one.

I also mentioned that my younger sister is now experiencing taste aversion just like I did. She recently caught a stomach virus the night after she ate from Chipotle. Every time someone in my family gets food from Chipotle, she refuses to eat it or even sit at the table with us while we eat. I can relate to how she felt because taste aversion occurs after becoming nauseous from eating a certain food. I just recently got over my taste aversion towards cheeseburgers, so I think it is going to be a while until she is able to eat Chipotle again.

Retroactive interference is when new information learned interferes with older information that was learned previously. When I was a senior in high school I took a statistics course. My teacher would give us weekly quizzes and we also would have tests every three weeks. The information on each test was not cumulative, so each test was based off of new material learned. In other words, older information previously learned in the class throughout the year would not show up on every test. However, before each test, we would learn new information that would not be on that test. Instead, the information learned the week of the test would be on the next test. For example, if we were to have a test on Thursday, March 13^th, the information on that test would have been based off of material learned up until Friday, March 7^th. We would not review for the test on Thursday; instead, we would move on and learn new material right before it. This material learned the week of the test was not to be on the test that week. All the material on that test was learned a few weeks before it. The method my teacher had of teaching us new material right before a test would really confuse me. It was difficult for me to remember the information learned previously that would actually be seen on the test. I found it hard to recall the test material because of new material interfering with my memory. Retroactive interference had a huge effect on me in my statistics class senior year. The information learned later in class would continually interfere with the information I had learned earlier. It would have been helpful if my teacher had helped us review the week of the test instead of having us learn new material that would not be on the test to avoid retroactive interference.