A series of studies assessing the influence of nonspecific interference upon response recall was performed. The general finding of Exp. I was that impressive amounts of retroactive inhibition (RI) may be produced when the interpolated learning consists of unrelated materials; this was true for responses in pairedassociate lists as well as responses learned by the method of free recall. In order to understand better the large amount of RI obtained with unrelated sets of paired associates (A-B, C-D transfer paradigm), this condition was compared with the A-B, A-D paradigm at three degrees of first-list learning in Exp. II. The second experiment revealed relatively small differences between the two paradigms at all degrees of learning. The final experiment indicated that the absence of first-list stimuli at recall was responsible for the failure to observe reliable differences between the two paradigms in Exp. II. The results are discussed in terms of two different interpretations of RI, viz., unlearning and response suppression.

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