In the fall, Professor Cole memorized the names of his 44 students. Now, in the spring, he has learned the names of his 42 new students. When Professor Cole runs into one of the students from the fall class, he finds that he cannot remember the student’s name. He could only think of the names of students in his spring class. This is most likely due to ______.

Retroactive interference is when more recent information gets in the way of trying to recall older information. in retroactive interference, there seems to be an issue of unlearning the things you’ve known before by overwriting them with new information. The professor could only remember the names of students from the spring because they are the most recent he added to his memory and have interfered in recalling the names of students from fall.