Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This work investigates the development and causes of memory interference effects. Specifically, we measuredproactive and retroactive interference effects in children and adults when learning multiple sets of contingencies, as well asindividuals’ memory binding for the same contingencies. We measured proactive interference by examining memory for asecond set of contingencies after learning a first set, and retroactive interference by examining memory for the first set ofcontingencies after learning the second set. We measured memory binding by presenting participants with partial informationabout each contingency and measuring their accuracy and pattern of errors when asked to identify the completed contingency.Results indicate that both children and adults experienced substantial interference effects, but children were more prone tointerference and substantially worse at memory binding. Additionally, individuals’ memory binding abilities were predictiveof the magnitude of interference effects, suggesting that memory binding is an important mechanism modulating memoryinterference.