- Extraversion And Retention Interval Interaction Of A Study On The Inner

Based on E.Walker's theory of action-decrement, H.Eysenck proposed that extroverts would perform better in short-term recall whereas introverts might show good long-term recall since they had different arousal level. That is, there should be a highly significant interaction between extroversion and retention interval. This was confirmed by Howarth and Eysenck (1968). According to literature, this predicted interaction has been obtained by many studies, but there were some negative results also. This study tried to represent this interaction in order to test H.Eysenck's hypothesis.Introverts and extroverts subjects were selected by EPQ. The dependent variable is recall score. The experiment design comprised ten cells (a) two personality extremes (E vs. I) being randomly allocated among the five recall intervals (b) 0, 1, 5, 30min, 24hr. The result support Eysenck's hypothesis that there is an interaction between extroversion and retention intervals; at the same time there is a main effect on retention intervals.But the result of this study is different from Howarth and Eysenck's, this may due to some differences between this two experiments. The article analyzed these differences and the possible reason for the interaction and discussed how this result is in accord with the basic theory that without review memory will die down with time going by.