ON REDUCING RETROACTIVE INTERFERENCE

Two experiments used a 2-list interference paradigm to investigate att ributes of an interfering list that were predicted to reduce the retro active interference to recalling an earlier learned list. In Experimen ts la and Ib, word frequency was manipulated such that the fir st list was always of low frequency (Experiment la) or was always of high fre quency (Experiment Ib), and the second list was systematically varied as of either high or low frequency Contrary to a list discrimination a ccount, high-frequency words always interfered less. In Experiment 2, an organized interfering list was shown to reduce significantly retroa ctive interference. List cohesion, ease of learning, interitem associa tions, and the similarity of the results to Bower and Mann's (1992) po stlearning cue (i.e., the postinformation effect) are discussed.