Deanna studied Spanish in high school. In college she registered for a re-medial French course. When required to speak in French during class discussion with her teacher and classmates, Deanna frequently responds with Spanish words instead of French words. This is one example of:.

Proactive interference

Explanation:

In psychology, the term proactive interference refers to a type of interference that happens when we cannot learn a new task because what we've learned before is interfering with the acquisition of the new knowledge. In other words, our previous knowledge interferes with the new task and makes it more difficult to learn the new one.

In this example, Deanna first studied Spanish in high school, later in college she registered for a remedial French course but when she was asked to speak in french she would respond with Spanish words. We can see that the previous knowledge that Deanna has (Spanish language) is interfering in her process of learning a new language (French) therefore, this would be an example of proactive interference.