Wickens et al.(1976)conducted an experiment using the Brown-Peterson task.People were given a short list of words,all from the same category,then counted backward for a few seconds and were asked to recall the list.They did this three times-and after each time,the recall of the list got worse.On the last trial,the participants were given a list of words from a different category to study,but were then asked to recall the words from the first category.How was the recall on this trial?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

This experiment demonstrated that the decay of memory trace can be prevented if rehearsal is prevented. The counting backward task prevented rehearsal, which led to poorer recall on each subsequent trial. However, when a different category of words was presented before recall on the final trial, it prevented proactive interference and allowed for better recall of the original words. Therefore, recall actually improved on this trial over prior trials.

Wickens Et Al