Abstract : The acquisition of skill on the standard Mashburn task facilitated and also interfered with the subsequent learning of the reversed task. The signs of both facilitation and interference were clearly present at the outset of reversed practice and persisted in recognizable form through several trials. The amounts of proactive facilitation and interference displayed during IL (interpolated learning) were not found to be positively related to the amount of OL (original learning) on the standard task. Only one of the 12 experimental groups yielded clear evidence of the functioning of retroactive facilitation. The experimental groups, especially those receiving 3 or 5 days of OL and IL, showed conspicuous signs of retroactive interference during the early stages of relearning. Results for the control groups showed that the decreases in matches and increases in errors displayed by the experimental groups at the outset of relearning were the result of retroactive interference and not the result of the mere passage of time from the last OL trial to the first RL trial nor of such intangible factors as boredom and fatigue. (Author)
Lewis et al. (Mon,) studied this question.