Ana learns some conversational portuguese in advance of a vacation in brazil. however, the spanish she used at home as a child sometimes impairs her retrieval of portuguese words and phrases. ana is experiencing interference.

Ana is experiencing cognitive interference between her newly-learned conversational Portuguese and the Spanish she learned and used fluently as a child. Because many words are similar in Portuguese and Spanish, when she searches her recently memory for the right word in Portuguese, sometimes the similar word that she learned effortlessly as a child comes to mind instead.