An analysis of item gains and losses in retroactive interference

Abstract

The repeated-testing paradigm is used to study both retroactive interference and hypermnesia (the improvement in memory across repeated tests). Considerable theoretical progress has been made by separately analyzing the 2 components of hypermnesia: the recovery of previously unrecalled items on later tests (item gains) and the forgetting of previously recalled items on later tests (item losses). Item gains increase with increases in item-specific processing, whereas item losses decrease with increases in relational processing. The authors suggest that separate analysis of item gains and losses in retroactive interference research may also prove fruitful. Three experiments showed that an interpolated list affects item gains but not losses, whereas processing similarity between the target and interpolated lists affects losses but not gains. These results are interpreted within the relational-item-specific processing framework.