Human Interference Theory and Application †MyAssignmenthelp.com

Queston: Discuss about the Human Interference Theory and Its Application in UAEs Banks Organizations to Attract More Customers. Answer: Human interference theory is a theory related to the field of psychology and is associated with the human memory. The human brain creates a repository of the acquired experiences in the past, by the individual, in the form of memories. The individual accesses these stored records while making decisions. The human interference theory explains the issues that occur when an individual is involved in the process of learning. This study aims to explain and provide an overview into the human interference theory and its relation to representativeness heuristic and availability heuristic ("Interference theory | freudforthought", 2017) Literature Review The research into the human interference theory dates back to the year of 1892 when a German psychologist had conducted an experiment with a group of volunteers. The participants were asked to sort a deck of cards into two respective piles based on words. When the location of the second pile was changed, it was observed that the participants took more time to arrange the cards. This indicated that the extra consumption of time that was taken by the participants was due to the effect of the interference of the human memory through the previously learned materials. The two major types of interference that obstruct an individuals ability to remember or reminisce a particular though or experience are: Proactive interference Retroactive interference Proactive interference refers to process of forgetting of acquired information pertaining to previous experience due to the fact that interference has been occurring from the learning of or traces collected from previous events that have taken place before happening of the current event that has to be remembered (Anderson Bower, 2014). Essentially the proactive interference is assumed to have occurred when a particular event or stimulus that had previously affected an individual seem to have interfered with the memory of the individual (Cormier Hagman, 2014). Proactive interference usually is created when the subject is trying to collect information from the similar domain that is the individual is gathering memories from the similar contexts. Proactive interference may also occur when the subject is asked to identify whether a particular material has been present in the previously learned list. Some experts associate the proactive interference theory with the short-term memory of the brain. Delos Wickens, an well known American psychologist discovered that when the list of materials that is being learned by a particular individual is changed, proactive interference takes place and all of this is processed by the brain of the individual in short-term memory ("Interference theory | freudforthought", 2017) Some of the famous experiments that had been conducted in order to evidently prove the existence of the proactive interference theory, had been done with the help of list. The experiment was conducted in order to observe the effect of proactive interference when the subject or subjects deal with multiple lists. The list used by the researchers consisted of ten paired adjectives. The participant or the volunteers of the experiment were given the task of learning the list by heart in order to correctly recall at least eight out of ten paired adjectives. After a span of forty-eight hours, the participants could successfully recall seven out of ten listed items on an average basis. However, the participants who had been given a new list after learning of the first one, could only recall forty percent of the previous list. The participants who had been provided a third list for the purpose of learning could only memorize twenty five percent of it (Cartwright, 2016). This clearly indicated that proactive interference of memory had restricted them to recall a good percentage of the previously listed items. Another important finding from the experiment was that the effect of proactive interference was less when the test was conducted immediately and also when the new list of targets was completely different from the previously learned lists. This is because proactive interference did could not affect much in this case as the subject or the memory acquired was not of the similar context. The second experiment that was conducted was span performance which was conducted in order to test the capacity of the working memory. The same result was obtained in this experiment too. The researchers found out that the ability of an individual to perform in the given task as part of the experiment reduced in the later trials. Retroactive interference on the other hand refers to the occurrence or phenomena when a newly acquired memory or learned information interferes with recalling of the previously learned information. Retroactive interference is primarily the decreasing capability of an individual to recall of the previously acquired learning or information due to recalling and learning of new information. Retroactive interference is said to have much larger effect than proactive interference because this phenomenon not only includes the process of forgetting but also the process of unlearning. For instance, an well known retroactive interference experiment that was conducted by a psychologist, Briggs, was of the name modified free recall. Under this experiment, the participants were asked to learn 12 paired associates which were labeled as A1-B1, A2-B2. Briggs asked the participants to recall an item at the time of cueing with the entire chain of B. The participants after multiple trials did learn the B chain items. After perfectly learning the A1-B1 items, the participants were given a new list of paired associates to learn (Donnelly, 2013). However, the B chain was replaced with the C chain. It was observed that gradually the recalling of the C chain items was much more than recalling of the B chain items. This indicated the occurrence of retroactive interference. Another important fact that was noted from the experiment was that when the participants were again tested after a span of twenty-four hours, it was founded that the recalling of the B chain was much more than the recalling of the C chain, thus, signifying that retroactive interference was a result of the memory dominance by the newly acquired memory. ("Interference theory | freudforthought", 2017). The retroactive interference is highly significant as it paved way for the debate between the experts as to which is the real reason for forgetting. Some experts supported the fact that the process of forgetting a particular memory was due to the interference of some other competing stimuli. Other experts were in favor of the fact that forgetting was a resultant effect of unlearning. Retroactive interference wins the support of most of the experts as they are of the opinion that the newly acquired memories or learning of information is always more dominant and therefore, always wins the competition with the older associations making it impossible for the individual to recall the previously learned information that is resulting in unlearning. (s3.amazonaws.com, retrieved November, 2017). Now, the term heuristic refers to the shortcut mental processes that the brain hires in order to facilitate the decision-making processes. An individual is taking decision or making judgments at every moment of his life. This means that these decision making processes go on all the time. In order to simplify the task of making a decision or determining a choice from a number of options the mind of an individual utilizes efficient strategies of thinking which are essentially known as heuristics. A heuristic fundamentally is a mental shortcut that is undertaken by an individual by the mind of an individual in order to simplify the decision making process without having to spend much time on researching and analyzing the gathered information. For instance, an individual walking on the road if finds a small pit or pothole on the road, he or she will go by that pit or pothole or if possible will take the alternative road. The individual will not instead, assess the depth of the pothole an d carry out analysis of other related information in order to examine his chances of crossing it by jumping ("Types of Heuristics: Availability, Representativeness Base-Rate - Video Lesson Transcript | Study.com", 2017). Availability heuristic refers to the illusion of thinking an event to be common and associating the occurrence of such an event to be high. Essentially, availability heuristic is a mental shortcut that helps an individual to make a decision based on the easy availability of ideas or examples while making a judgment. For instance, when an individual is asked about the percentage of crimes that involve violence, each and every individual indicates a high percentage because of the fact that the crimes that involve violence are highlighted on the news. This compels the mind of an individual to think that the occurrence of such an event is plenty. Therefore, they associate the occurrence of such an event with a higher number of instances. However, when researched it is found out that violent crimes only form a meager part of the total part of criminal activity. This phenomenon is known as availability heuristic. Representativeness heuristic on the other hand refers to a mental shortcut that helps an individual in making a decision by associating or comparing gathered information with the mental prototypes. For instance, the description of an old woman who is warm and loves children much is assumed to be falling into the domain of a grandmother, therefore, the mind of the individual associates her with the mental prototype of a grandmother. Representativeness heuristic allows an individual to take decision quickly without giving much thought to the situation ("Types of Heuristics: Availability, Representativeness Base-Rate - Video Lesson Transcript | Study.com", 2017) The relationship between the human interference theory and representativeness and availability heuristic is that proper training of the mind on representativeness heuristic and availability heuristic can challenge the process of forgetting or the effects of retroactive interference or proactive interference on the memory of the individual. Proactive interference is similar to the process of representativeness heuristic. The association of the newly acquired information to the previously gathered mental prototypes is essentially what is referred to as proactive interference. Therefore, proper training of the mind of an individual to associate the currently acquired information to the mental prototypes after proper analysis and judgment may reduce the effect of proactive interference . (s3.amazonaws.com, retrieved November, 2017). On the other hand the retroactive interference or the unlearning process may be reduced with the help of proper training on availability heuristic. The illus ion of thinking the occurrence of a certain event to be more than what the actual rate, refers to availability heuristic. Therefore, it essentially gives more importance to the currently acquired information rather than what the previous instances have been. Therefore, training of the mind to pose a balance between the occurrence of a commonly acquired information and the real availability or occurrence of the event can reduce the dominance of the currently acquired information on the previous learning. Thus, the effects of retroactive interference can be reduced (Heath Bryant, 2013). Conclusion Thus it is clear from the above discussion that both the human interference theory and the concept of heuristic has a major implication on the decision making process of an individual. This means that an individual who has learned to pose a balance between the mental shortcuts of availability and representativeness heuristic has also learnt to reduce the effects of proactive and retroactive interference theory. It can also be concluded that heuristics as a part of psychology has been developed in order to understand and remedy the interference of the human memory by proactive and retroactive interference. References Interference theory | freudforthought. (2017). Freudforthought.wordpress.com. Retrieved 22 November 2017, from https://freudforthought.wordpress.com/tag/interference-theory/ Anderson, J. R., Bower, G. H. (2014). Human associative memory. Psychology press. Cormier, S. M., Hagman, J. D. (Eds.). (2014). Transfer of learning: Contemporary research and applications. Academic Press. Cartwright, J. (2016). Evolution and Human Behaviour: Darwinian Perspectives on the Human Condition. Palgrave Macmillan. Donnelly, J. (2013). Universal human rights in theory and practice. Cornell University Press. (2017). Retrieved 22 November 2017, from https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/40574864/Mechanisms_and_neuronal_networks_involve20151202-28212-19wmnjf.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3AExpires=1511297566Signature=0o8xSrhAFVt%2BMY4HHA5g582qpJc%3Dresponse-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3DMechanisms_and_neuronal_networks_involve.pdf Types of Heuristics: Availability, Representativeness Base-Rate - Video Lesson Transcript | Study.com. (2017). Study.com. Retrieved 22 November 2017, from https://study.com/academy/lesson/heuristics.html Heath, R. L., Bryant, J. (2013). Human communication theory and research: Concepts, contexts, and challenges. Routledge.