All this happened, more or less.

memory interference principle: the more you know the harder it is to put new items into or retrieve them from your memory.

a remarkable dilemma follows from this principle: one one hand you want to know about a certain subject as much as possible in order to not miss any relevant information ( e.g. something that might lead to a solution); on the other hand you want to know very little about the subject in order to acquire new knowledge or effectively retrieve knowledge acquired previously.

no wonder socrates thought about all knowledge as recovered from one's immortal soul, not acquired. ( quote from Plato's Meno )

his method of questioning implied systematic destruction of irrelevant information, which allowed him and his subjects recover facts and considerations connected directly to the problem at hand. very similar to michelangelo's notion of removing extra marble to discover the beauty inside the rock.

also, relates to the four waves of problem solving approach.