When subjects learned paired associates that, on the study trials, consisted of a stimulus (cue) and its correct (target) response plus two other (distractor) responses from within the list, the presence of the distractor items interfered with learning, especially when overtly pronounced as opposed to silently studied. A second experiment showed that this was due at least in part to the increased difficulty of discriminating the target item. The results are related to a theory that attributes the reduction of interference to a postretrieval discrimination among alternative responses that is based on the situational frequency of the cue/target pairs.