Also: Interference Effects — In biological terms, interference occurs when existing learned responses (i.e., existing memories) are diminished by subsequent learning. Interference may also be said to occur as a result of preceding memories, when they interfere with new learning. Interference manifests in a variety of ways, for example when trying to remember material that has previously been learned.

Proactive Interference is seen when existing memories make learning a new response more difficult.

Retroactive Interference is when more recently learned material interferes with the recall of material that was learned earlier (also, sometimes called retrograde interference).




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In Artificial Neural Networks

Interference can also be observed in many artificial neural network learning models. In some, such as backpropagation networks, interference is extreme. It causes the network to break down when called upon to learn any new response after being trained. This effectively prevents the network from being able to continuously learn from its milieu, requiring it to be placed into response-only mode once it has been trained. When discussing this extreme form of interference in artificial networks, it is normally referred to as catastrophic forgetting (or, "catastrophic interference").




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Resources

• Does Perceptual Learning Suffer from Retrograde Interference?

• Proactive Interference, Retroactive Interference – What About Self-interference? A New Interpretation of the Recency-Primacy Shift

• [pdf] Contextual Interference: Single Task Versus Multi-task Learning

• [pdf] Interference in Learning Internal Models of Inverse Dynamics in Humans

• [pdf] Construction and interference in learning from multiple representation

• Spatial context learning survives interference from working memory load

• Learning and Cognition (Anthony Wright, Ph.D.)

• Factors affecting Learning