Accounting Seminar 1: Human Interference Theory and Heuristics

This essay, prepared for an Accounting Seminar, delves into the intricacies of human interference theory, exploring both proactive and retroactive interference. It examines the impact of these memory processes on decision-making, particularly in the context of the UAE banking sector. The study provides an overview of the theory and its relationship with representativeness and availability heuristics. The essay highlights how an understanding of these concepts can mitigate the effects of interference on memory and improve the decision-making process. The author uses literature review to support the analysis. The paper also provides a discussion on the implications of the human interference theory and heuristics on the ability to attract more customers.

Running head: ACCOUNTING SEMINAR
ACCOUNTING SEMINAR
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note

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Table of Contents
Assignment I – Human Interference Theory and Its Application in UAE’s Banks
Organizations to Attract More Customers’: A Literature Review.............................................2
Introduction............................................................................................................................2
Literature Review...................................................................................................................2
Conclusion..............................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................7

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Assignment I – Human Interference Theory and Its Application in UAE’s Banks
Organizations to Attract More Customers’: A Literature Review
Introduction
Human interference theory is a theory related to the field of psychology and is
associated with the human memory. The human brain creates a repository of the acquired
experiences in the past, by the individual, in the form of memories. The individual accesses
these stored records while making decisions. The human interference theory explains the
issues that occur when an individual is involved in the process of learning. This study aims to
explain and provide an overview into the human interference theory and its relation to
representativeness heuristic and availability heuristic ("Interference theory |
freudforthought", 2017)
.
Literature Review
The research into the human interference theory dates back to the year of 1892 when a
German psychologist had conducted an experiment with a group of volunteers. The
participants were asked to sort a deck of cards into two respective piles based on words.
When the location of the second pile was changed, it was observed that the participants took
more time to arrange the cards. This indicated that the extra consumption of time that was
taken by the participants was due to the effect of the interference of the human memory
through the previously learned materials.
The two major types of interference that obstruct an individual’s ability to remember or
reminisce a particular though or experience are:
 Proactive interference
 Retroactive interference
Proactive interference refers to process of forgetting of acquired information pertaining to
previous experience due to the fact that interference has been occurring from the learning of
or traces collected from previous events that have taken place before happening of the current
event that has to be remembered (Anderson & Bower, 2014). Essentially the proactive
interference is assumed to have occurred when a particular event or stimulus that had

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previously affected an individual seem to have interfered with the memory of the individual
(Cormier & Hagman, 2014).
Proactive interference usually is created when the subject is trying to collect
information from the similar domain that is the individual is gathering memories from the
similar contexts. Proactive interference may also occur when the subject is asked to identify
whether a particular material has been present in the previously learned list. Some experts
associate the proactive interference theory with the short-term memory of the brain. Delos
Wickens, an well known American psychologist discovered that when the list of materials
that is being learned by a particular individual is changed, proactive interference takes place
and all of this is processed by the brain of the individual in short-term memory
("Interference theory | freudforthought", 2017)
.
Some of the famous experiments that had been conducted in order to evidently prove
the existence of the proactive interference theory, had been done with the help of list. The
experiment was conducted in order to observe the effect of proactive interference when the
subject or subjects deal with multiple lists. The list used by the researchers consisted of ten
paired adjectives. The participant or the volunteers of the experiment were given the task of
learning the list by heart in order to correctly recall at least eight out of ten paired adjectives.
After a span of forty-eight hours, the participants could successfully recall seven out of ten
listed items on an average basis. However, the participants who had been given a new list
after learning of the first one, could only recall forty percent of the previous list. The
participants who had been provided a third list for the purpose of learning could only
memorize twenty five percent of it (Cartwright, 2016). This clearly indicated that proactive
interference of memory had restricted them to recall a good percentage of the previously
listed items. Another important finding from the experiment was that the effect of proactive
interference was less when the test was conducted immediately and also when the new list of
targets was completely different from the previously learned lists. This is because proactive
interference did could not affect much in this case as the subject or the memory acquired was
not of the similar context.
The second experiment that was conducted was span performance which was
conducted in order to test the capacity of the working memory. The same result was obtained

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in this experiment too. The researchers found out that the ability of an individual to perform
in the given task as part of the experiment reduced in the later trials.
Retroactive interference on the other hand refers to the occurrence or phenomena
when a newly acquired memory or learned information interferes with recalling of the
previously learned information. Retroactive interference is primarily the decreasing capability
of an individual to recall of the previously acquired learning or information due to recalling
and learning of new information. Retroactive interference is said to have much larger effect
than proactive interference because this phenomenon not only includes the process of
forgetting but also the process of unlearning. For instance, an well known retroactive
interference experiment that was conducted by a psychologist, Briggs, was of the name
modified free recall. Under this experiment, the participants were asked to learn 12 paired
associates which were labeled as A1-B1, A2-B2. Briggs asked the participants to recall an
item at the time of cueing with the entire chain of B. The participants after multiple trials did
learn the B chain items. After perfectly learning the A1-B1 items, the participants were given
a new list of paired associates to learn (Donnelly, 2013). However, the B chain was replaced
with the C chain. It was observed that gradually the recalling of the C chain items was much
more than recalling of the B chain items. This indicated the occurrence of retroactive
interference. Another important fact that was noted from the experiment was that when the
participants were again tested after a span of twenty-four hours, it was founded that the
recalling of the B chain was much more than the recalling of the C chain, thus, signifying that
retroactive interference was a result of the memory dominance by the newly acquired
memory. ("Interference theory | freudforthought", 2017).
The retroactive interference is highly significant as it paved way for the debate
between the experts as to which is the real reason for forgetting. Some experts supported the
fact that the process of forgetting a particular memory was due to the interference of some
other competing stimuli. Other experts were in favor of the fact that forgetting was a resultant
effect of unlearning. Retroactive interference wins the support of most of the experts as they
are of the opinion that the newly acquired memories or learning of information is always
more dominant and therefore, always wins the competition with the older associations
making it impossible for the individual to recall the previously learned information that is
resulting in unlearning. (s3.amazonaws.com, retrieved November, 2017).

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Now, the term heuristic refers to the shortcut mental processes that the brain hires in
order to facilitate the decision-making processes. An individual is taking decision or making
judgments at every moment of his life. This means that these decision making processes go
on all the time. In order to simplify the task of making a decision or determining a choice
from a number of options the mind of an individual utilizes efficient strategies of thinking
which are essentially known as heuristics. A heuristic fundamentally is a mental shortcut that
is undertaken by an individual by the mind of an individual in order to simplify the decision
making process without having to spend much time on researching and analyzing the
gathered information. For instance, an individual walking on the road if finds a small pit or
pothole on the road, he or she will go by that pit or pothole or if possible will take the
alternative road. The individual will not instead, assess the depth of the pothole and carry out
analysis of other related information in order to examine his chances of crossing it by
jumping ("Types of Heuristics: Availability, Representativeness & Base-Rate
- Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com", 2017).
Availability heuristic refers to the illusion of thinking an event to be common and
associating the occurrence of such an event to be high. Essentially, availability heuristic is a
mental shortcut that helps an individual to make a decision based on the easy availability of
ideas or examples while making a judgment. For instance, when an individual is asked about
the percentage of crimes that involve violence, each and every individual indicates a high
percentage because of the fact that the crimes that involve violence are highlighted on the
news. This compels the mind of an individual to think that the occurrence of such an event is
plenty. Therefore, they associate the occurrence of such an event with a higher number of
instances. However, when researched it is found out that violent crimes only form a meager
part of the total part of criminal activity. This phenomenon is known as availability heuristic.
Representativeness heuristic on the other hand refers to a mental shortcut that helps an
individual in making a decision by associating or comparing gathered information with the
mental prototypes. For instance, the description of an old woman who is warm and loves
children much is assumed to be falling into the domain of a grandmother, therefore, the mind
of the individual associates her with the mental prototype of a grandmother.
Representativeness heuristic allows an individual to take decision quickly without giving
much thought to the situation ("Types of Heuristics: Availability,

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Representativeness & Base-Rate - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com",
2017)
.
The relationship between the human interference theory and representativeness and
availability heuristic is that proper training of the mind on representativeness heuristic and
availability heuristic can challenge the process of forgetting or the effects of retroactive
interference or proactive interference on the memory of the individual. Proactive interference
is similar to the process of representativeness heuristic. The association of the newly acquired
information to the previously gathered mental prototypes is essentially what is referred to as
proactive interference. Therefore, proper training of the mind of an individual to associate the
currently acquired information to the mental prototypes after proper analysis and judgment
may reduce the effect of proactive interference . (s3.amazonaws.com, retrieved November,
2017). On the other hand the retroactive interference or the unlearning process may be
reduced with the help of proper training on availability heuristic. The illusion of thinking the
occurrence of a certain event to be more than what the actual rate, refers to availability
heuristic. Therefore, it essentially gives more importance to the currently acquired
information rather than what the previous instances have been. Therefore, training of the
mind to pose a balance between the occurrence of a commonly acquired information and the
real availability or occurrence of the event can reduce the dominance of the currently
acquired information on the previous learning. Thus, the effects of retroactive interference
can be reduced (Heath & Bryant, 2013).
Conclusion
Thus it is clear from the above discussion that both the human interference theory and
the concept of heuristic has a major implication on the decision making process of an
individual. This means that an individual who has learned to pose a balance between the
mental shortcuts of availability and representativeness heuristic has also learnt to reduce the
effects of proactive and retroactive interference theory. It can also be concluded that
heuristics as a part of psychology has been developed in order to understand and remedy the
interference of the human memory by proactive and retroactive interference.

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References
Interference theory | freudforthought. (2017).
Freudforthought.wordpress.com. Retrieved 22 November 2017, from
https://freudforthought.wordpress.com/tag/interference-theory/
Anderson, J. R., & Bower, G. H. (2014). Human associative memory. Psychology press.
Cormier, S. M., & Hagman, J. D. (Eds.). (2014). Transfer of learning: Contemporary
research and applications. Academic Press.
Cartwright, J. (2016). Evolution and Human Behaviour: Darwinian Perspectives on the
Human Condition. Palgrave Macmillan.
Donnelly, J. (2013). Universal human rights in theory and practice. Cornell University Press.
(2017). Retrieved 22 November 2017, from
https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/40574864/Mec
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Types of Heuristics: Availability, Representativeness & Base-Rate - Video
& Lesson Transcript | Study.com. (2017). Study.com. Retrieved 22
November 2017, from
http://study.com/academy/lesson/heuristics.html
Heath, R. L., & Bryant, J. (2013). Human communication theory and research: Concepts,
contexts, and challenges. Routledge.