Associative unlearning as a function of degree of interpolated learning

Unlearning as a function of degree of interpolated learning and method of testing in the A-B, A-C and A-B, C-D paradigms.

“…In the A-C paradigm, specific associative unlearning was also found at all but the lowest degree of IL but it was found to increase significantly between the IL-1 and IL-5 groups. The present A-C results closely replicate Sandak and Garskof (1967) so that it seems safe to state that matching errors are related to degree of IL in this paradigm.…”

“…A second issue examined in the present study is the relation between degree of IL and amount of specific associative unlearning. The only relevant study is Sandak and Garskof (1967) which found specific associative unlearning to be positively related to degree of IL in the A-C paradigm. The present study will reexamine the relationship for A-C and test the same relationship in C-D. Houston (1967) suggested that one possible cause for matching errors in C-D as well as any other paradigm might be subtle competition at the time of the test which is not eliminated by the matching technique.…”

Role of response availability in transfer and interference.

“…There are strong indications that interpolated learning under conditions of negative transfer (A-B, A-C) rapidly reduces response availability whereas associative losses develop slowly and remain relatively minor. This conclusion is based on the results of experiments in which the successive lists were learned under conditions requiring response recall (usually the anticipation method) and retention was tested either by an unpaced recall procedure or by associative matching (Garskof & Sandak, 1964;Postman, 1965;Postman, Stark, & Fraser, 1968;Sandak & Garskof, 1967). However, such findings are not conclusive since there may have been differences in the degree of overlearning of the first list with respect to the requirements of the two test procedures.…”

Critical issues in interference theory

“…The empirical findings at issue can be briefly summarized as follows. When acquisition is by a recall procedure and retention is tested by associative matching, some RI is typically found, although of a smaller order of magnitude than on an MMFR test (e.g., Delprato, 1971;Garskof, 1968;Garskof & Sandak, 1964;Sandak & Garskof, 1967). Such measures suffer from the difficulty that there is a shift in procedure between acquisition and the test of retention, which may possibly have more adverse effects on an experimental group learning two lists than on a control group learning a single list.…”