In the face of behaviorism during the late 1920s through the 1950s, and through the early growth of cognitive psychology in the late 1950s and early 1960s, inhibition largely disappeared as a theory. Instead, classical interference theory dominated memory research until as late as 1960. By the early 1970s, however, classical interference theory began to decline due to its reliance on associationism, its inability to explain the facts of interference or how interference applies to everyday life, and to newly published reports on proactive and retroactive inhibition.