The Effect of Spontaneous Recovery and Interference on Rat’s Retention of Discriminations

36 albino rats were trained successively to learn two discriminative problems, comparable to the A-B, A-D paradigm in verbal learning, to the same learning criteron. Retention of either discrimination was tested in eight sessions spaced at an interval of two days apart. The results confirmed the interference theory and crowding effect. Proactive inhibition increased with time while retroactive inhibition decreased, then both became approximately equal.