Retroactive Interference

Retroactive interference, also called retroactive inhibition, is a memory phenomenon in which newly learned information impairs a person's ability to retrieve information that was learned earlier. It is documented as the more common and generally more problematic of the two classic interference effects, the opposite in direction to proactive interference, in which older memories instead interfere with newer ones. Two mechanisms are described as underlying the effect: competition, in which new associations compete with and can override older associations during retrieval, making the earlier material harder to access, and unlearning, in which the process of forming new associations actively weakens or replaces the neural traces of the original ones rather than merely competing with them. The effect grows stronger when previously learned skills or information have gone unrehearsed for extended periods, which makes retroactive interference particularly relevant to research on long-term memory retention and the maintenance of learned skills over time.