Interference and Inhibition in Cognition and Behavior ...

Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 11, No. 2, 1999

Response: Dempster and Corkill's "Interference and Inhibition in Cognition and Behavior: Unifying Themes for Educational Psychology" Roger Bruning1,2 and Terri Flowerday1

Dempster and Corkill present a persuasive case for the utility of the concepts of interference and inhibition in their review, "Interference and Inhibition in Cognition and Behavior: Unifying Themes for Educational Psychology." We were especially attracted to their drawing attention to the role of inhibition in learning and to the argument that closer links of educational psychology to neuroscience are needed. At a general level of analysis, we agreed that the concepts of interference and inhibition can provide a unifying framework for describing phenomena in several areas of inquiry, but these concepts seemed to us to be less useful for understanding structured, meaningful learning in instructional domains. Overall, we viewed Dempster and Corkill's review as a creative effort that usefully redirects our attention to neglected basic learning processes. KEY WORDS: interference; inhibition; cognition; learning; education.

Is there anything new under the sun? In reading Frank Dempster and Alice Corkill's (1999) excellent review, the answer is both "no" and "absolutely." First, "no." The concepts of interference and inhibition already have had a long history of moments in the sun. As Dempster and Corkill point out, both trace back to psychology's very earliest days (e.g., Ebbinghaus 1885/1913; Sechanov, 1863) and have played important roles throughout its history. Interference theory, for example, has figured prominently through much of the twentieth century in research of great interest 1Center

for Instructional Innovation, University of Nebraska—Lincoln. be directed to Roger Bruning, 212 Bancroft, University of Nebraska— Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0384.

2Correspondence should

89 1040-726X/99/0600-0089S 16.00/0 ® 1999 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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to educational psychologists (e.g., Jenkins and Dallenbach, 1924; Melton, 1940; Robinson, 1932; Underwood, 1964; Waugh and Norman, 1965), especially as the field sought to understand and explain transfer of learning (Gagne, 1977). Absolutely? In their review, Dempster and Corkill have provided us with a number of new insights into the potential explanatory power and utility of the interference and inhibition concepts. What they have written merits the field's close attention. One of the most fascinating aspects of Dempster and Corkill's review is its ability to make so convincing a case for a conceptual framework abandoned by all but a handful of educational psychologists. As is generally known, interference and inhibition and the parent theoretical framework of associationism once were hugely influential in American psychology; for instance, applying the research to educational practice (e.g., Hall, 1955; Robinson, 1932) was one of educational psychologists' most important goals well into the latter half of the twentieth century. During the past two decades, however, interference and inhibition have been almost entirely absent from the list of important concepts in educational psychology. In Glover and Ronning's (1987) edited volume on the history of educational psychology, for instance, none of the volume's authors chose to refer to these concepts, such that neither concept even appears in the index. If current educational psychology texts (e.g., Bruning et al., 1999; Pressley and McCormick, 1997; Slavin, 1997) mention inferference and inhibition, they typically do so in the context of explaining rote learning. What caused this precipitous fall from favor? The general answer is that interference and inhibition were abandoned as psychology rushed in the 1960s and 1970s to embrace more contextualized, constructivist views of learning. In a highly influential American Psychologist article, for example, J. J. Jenkins (1974), a prominent memory theorist, described how he had come to doubt associationistic explanations of memory and moved to contextualist ones. More than associations were involved, he argued; the quality of events greatly affects what is observed in any experiment. Using this reasoning, he and others created a host of compelling experimental and naturalistic demonstrations of how contextual variables can affect learning and memory. Part of their attractiveness to educational psychologists was the focus on such educationally relevant variables as study activity (e.g., Hyde and Jenkins, 1969), biasing information (e.g., Loftus and Loftus, 1980; Neisser, 1982), and frames of reference (e.g., Anderson and Ortony, 1975; Mandler and Johnson, 1977; Rumelhart, 1975). Falling on fertile ground, the seeds from this contextualist research flowered in such valuable child-centered educational methods as reciprocal teaching (Brown and Palincsar, 1989), knowledge activation (e.g., Hansen and Pearson, 1983), strategy training (e.g., Pressley et al., 1984), and cooper-

Response to Dempster and Corkill

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ative learning (Slavin, 1987). Today, these ideas are instantiated in national standards and suggested classroom practices for science, math, foreign language, language arts, and other areas (e.g., ACTFL, 1996; National Research Council, 1996), whereas the associationist perspective has been largely ignored. Dempster and CorkilFs review is a very useful reminder of the need to include basic processes in accounts of learning. Although the current emphasis on active learning and constructed knowledge is a welcome counter to an overemphasis on such practices as lecturing, textbook use, and testing factual recall, it has its own shortcomings. Many of the most cherished cognitive goals—reading, writing, learning strategies, problem solving, decision making—require expertise built on repertoires of automatized responses. Acquiring this expertise involves basic learning processes of association, repetition, and extended practice to which the concepts of interference and inhibition are especially applicable. Any "cognitive psychology of education" is deficient to the extent that it neglects cognition's associationistic side, which cognitive psychology itself has never abandoned. Many of the field's strongest researchers have sustained research programs in the associationistic tradition, publishing their work regularly in journals such as Psychological Review, Psychological Bulletin, Child Development, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. This research and its synthesis continues to provide new insights into the processes and structures affecting learning, memory, concept development, and problem solving. Dempster and Corkill's review argues for the relevance of this work to educational psychology. We are especially attracted to two dimensions of their argument. The first is the more general one—the need to establish a much closer partnership between educational psychology and modern neuroscience. Especially in light of advances in technological neuroimaging, the information provided by neuropsychological research is becoming increasingly relevant to our field. When interference theory and the role of inhibitory process were last at the center of educational debate, cognitive psychologists did not have technologies providing detailed color-coded pictures of the brain as learners process incoming stimuli or try to retrieve information from episodic memory. The theoretical basis for concepts such as interference and inhibition was derived from black box experiments manipulating variables such as materials similarity and practice conditions and examining verbal and written recall of individual text items. What the neurosciences are beginning to make possible are increasingly revealing glimpses of what is happening in the black box. Researchers can now "view" internal neurological processes (at least their physiological correlates) as they occur in specific brain regions as learners grapple with

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simple and complex learning problems. Awh et al. (1995), for example, in a series of item recognition tasks modeled after those developed by Sternberg (1966), have used PET images to show that internal, covert speech (e.g., in working memory) activates the same regions of the frontal cortex as oral speech. An additional advantage of these new technologies is the ability to examine neurological function in healthy brains (e.g., Wheeler et al., 1997). As a consequence, reliance on studies of individuals with abnormal brain function or of the selective brain lesioning of experimental laboratory animals is greatly reduced. It now is possible to obtain images of nonpathological brain function as research participants engage in controlled cognitive tasks. As these studies become increasingly sophisticated and as the technology continues to evolve, we think it likely that an improved understanding of human cognitive functioning will emerge. For example, current research (e.g., Schacter, 1996) indicates that when stimuli are presented to a participant with normal brain function, it takes approximately a third of a second for the electrical wave (P300) to reach its peak, which corresponds to the increased blood flow to the frontal lobe. Similarly, research using PET technology shows that two primary cognitive processes are linked to increased activation in specific regions of the brain: information encoding to activation of the left prefrontal cortex and information retrieval to activation of the right prefrontal cortex (Tulving et al., 1994). Such information points to the possibility of exploring activation processes on an individual basis and learning more about encoding and retrieval problems. A second significant feature of their review is the case it makes for the importance of inhibition in human cognition and learning. Educational psychologists know, of course, that information must be attended to, encoded (organized and prepared for storage), and retrieved as needed in order for learning to take place. These processes have been the subject of study for nearly a century, and researchers today continue to seek greater understanding of them. The focus remains on activation, however—on understanding how information is created, gets "turned on," and is made accessible. Dempster and Corkill's important service is in forcefully reminding readers that there necessarily are two processes in learning and cognition, activation and inhibition of activation. For every bit of information generated and each neural pathway activated, there simultaneously are the path not taken, the information not activated, and the responses inhibited. In contrast to this view, most current accounts of learning focus almost entirely on activation processes. But can descriptions of cognition, learning, and behavior built solely on activation lead to the understanding of important developmental and educational processes? In the field of educational


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psychology, the questions addressed in most detail by researchers and text authors are these: How are connections made? What conditions lead to effective encoding and retrieval strategies? and How can learners actively participate in their own cognitive processes? The questions not being asked include, What information is not being activated? Why is it bypassed? Is incorrect or inappropriate information being activated? and Could it be due to a deficit in inhibitory function? It seems to us that researchers need to understand the screening processes of inhibition as well as the processes of cognitive activation. A full account of learning will include both what should and what should not be activated and why. Although questions such as these are being overlooked by most researchers in the field of educational psychology, recent studies in the neurosciences using PET technology are beginning to provide evidence for the role of inhibition. Shimamura (1995), for example, has shown that the prefrontal cortex may be a critical screening area in working memory, functioning to determine which signals move on to the posterior cortical regions. He argues that cognitive disorders may be the result of inefficient filtering of neural activity entering the posterior cortical area. Without this mechanism solidly in place, susceptibility to interference increases. In general, Shimamura contends, memory deficits may signal broader cognitive impairments related to difficulty in controlling extraneous information processes. On the question of whether interference and inhibition will be "good concepts" for the field in the long run, we believe the answer depends on the level of analysis to which the concepts are applied. At the more general level, illustrated by the two points above, we would answer "yes." We are persuaded by Dempster and Corkill's argument that interference and inhibition can be usefully related to a number of cognitive and behavioral phenomena. By demonstrating the concepts' relevance in a variety of research areas, Dempster and Corkill show that the concepts can be extended well beyond the narrow "verbal learning" and "rote memory" niches into which many educational psychologists had them tucked. As we have stated, their review seems particularly useful in building bridges to the emerging field of neuropsychology and in drawing attention to the insights neuropsychological research likely will offer as its methods and theories continue to evolve. The concepts of interference and inhibition may provide a metaframework against which implications and extrapolations of other, more specific theories can be judged. The point that inhibition is the necessary companion of activation in learning is one we find especially intriguing as a complement to current social cognitive approaches to education that stress knowledge activation and discourse processes. Dempster and Corkill remind readers that winnowing as well as gathering may be needed in the harvest of learning.

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At a more specific level, however, we are less sanguine about the utility of interference and inhibition as explanatory concepts. Taking two examples provided by Dempster and Corkill, for instance, we think that performance difficulties that occur (1) when math problem types change (e.g., 3 + 6 = ? becomes 3 + ? = 9) or (2) when learners are overloaded with too much information are more satisfactorily explained by concepts other than failure of inhibition or interference. In the first example, although it is true that students may run off algorithmic responses to math problems and make mistakes when problem forms change, an explanation that students are perseverating due to lack of inhibition seems less satisfying than one focusing on the students' failure to respond to the conceptual dimensions of the problem. From an educational standpoint, it seems more useful to focus on the latter than the former. Indeed, explanations focusing on conceptual understanding (or lack of it) in relation to instructional methods have transformed the way educators look at mathematics learning and instruction (e.g., Kamii, 1994, Schoenfeld, 1987). Likewise, taking the second example, although we agree with Dempster and Corkill regarding the "information overload" many of today's students experience, we argue that meaning and organizational deficits, not interference brought on by sheer amount of information, are the core issues. Although interference no doubt occurs, we see it as a by-product of students' lack of conceptual understanding. Focusing on inhibition may divert attention away from more critical dimensions of learning. It seems to us that interference becomes a less useful explanation when information is structured, purposeful, and makes sense. Overall, Dempster and Corkill have provided a framework that will stimulate advances in both theory and practice, and we commend them for an inventive and insightful review. Their greatest service is in their redirecting us "back to the basics"—to two fundamental processes of learning and to their unifying potential. They not only have shown how interference and inhibition can provide common explanations for diverse intellectual and social behavior, but have alerted educational psychologists to developing areas of research needed to inform our thinking. They review excellent work that has gone before and research that has continued to develop, largely unseen by many educational psychologists, but with greater generality and applicability than might have been imagined. REFERENCES ACTFL (1996). Standards for Foreign Language Learning: 1996 National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, Allen Press, Lawrence, KS. Anderson, R.C., and Ortony, A. (1975). On putting apples into bottles: A problem of polysemy. Cognit. Psychol. 7: 167-180.


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