Abstract
Extra-experimental sources of interference have been postulated to explain the forgetting which takes place when Ss who are naive to verbal learning experiments learn a list and later recall it. However, in contradiction to the predictions of interference theory, several experiments have failed to show any effects of extra-experimental interference. The present experiment replicates Ekstrand & Underwood (1965) and shows that these findings may be due to S’s use of natural language mediators (NLMs) which make it inappropriate to manipulate extra-experimental interference using letter associations.
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1. This research was supported in part by the Joint Services Electronics Program (U. S. Army, U. S. Navy, and U. S. Air Force) under Contract No. DA 28 043 AMC 00073 (E), and in part by Contract OEC-3-6-058375-0612.
2. The authors are grateful to Clinton Walker, Rosemary Wearing and Douglas Atwood for their assistance in carrying out this research.
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Montague, W.E., Wearing, A.J. Natural language mediation: A source of interference with extra-experimental interference. Psychon Sci 9, 317–318 (1967). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03327824
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03327824