Interference

The term “interference” is used to describe disturbance and disruption in the retrieval of information from our long-term memory. It is caused by the overlapping of various pieces of information.

Interference as consequence of similarity

Interference is especially likely to occur when there are strong similarities between chunks of information. Think back to language lessons when you were at school, for example. If you were unlucky enough to simultaneous learn the word for “church” in French (“église”), Spanish (“iglesia”) and/or Italian (“chiesa”) then you probably had difficulty distinguishing between them.
Things get even more difficult when it comes to the word “chocolate”, which is almost identical in French (“chocolat”) and Spanish (“chocolate”). How do you remember when to add the final “e” and when not? Even the Italian translation “cioccolata” might look very different but sounds fairly similar!

Interference can also occur in the natural sciences. Having just memorised the Calvin cycle as part of your revision on the topic of photosynthesis, you may well have difficulties if you move straight on to the Krebs cycle within the context of cellular respiration. The reason for this is that similarities between macrostructures (here: cyclical structure) increase the risk of interference.

Interference as a consequence of insufficient depth of processing

Interference can also be attributable to insufficient depth of processing. This is often the case when we try to learn too much information at the same time, which generally results in us memorising individual facts by heart rather than learning to understand how all facts related to a specific topic hang together.