Retroactive interference after discrimination reversal decreases following temporal and physical context changes in human subjects.

One experiment was conducted to test the additive effects of physical context changes and the passage of time on a retroactive interference task in human subjects. Participants learned a discrimination in a symbolic matching to sample situation within a specific context. The discrimination was subsequently reversed. The context in which the reversal occurred was combined factorially with the passage of time before the test. All testing was conducted in the context in which the original discrimination was acquired. Participants had received the discrimination reversal in either a context different from that in which the original discrimination was acquired, or in the same context. Half of each of the groups mentioned above received testing immediately after reversal training and the other half received testing 48 h later. Both manipulations, changing the context after the reversal and the passage of time following the reversal, led to a recovery of the original discrimination performance. Participants that received both a context change and retention interval showed the largest recovery.