Retroactive Inhibition and Spontaneous Recovery in a Contingent Verbal Discrimination Task

A primary purpose of the present experiment was to examine retroactive inhibition and spontaneous recovery by employing a task which combines aspects of paired-associate and verbal-discrimination learning. The design was a 3 × 2 independent groups factorial manipulating type of interpolated learning and length of the retention interval. There were 14 Ss in each of the six groups. Significant retroactive inhibition was found in one condition and an absolute temporal increase in List-1 recall in another; however, the interaction of Condition × Retention Interval was not significant. Acquisition and recall data are discussed primarily in terms of frequency theory and response-set interference.