Can People Intentionally and Selectively Forget Prose Material?

Abstract

List-method directed forgetting (LMDF) is the demonstration that people can intentionally forget previously studied information when they are asked to forget what they have previously learned and remember new information instead. In addition, recent research demonstrated that people can selectively forget when cued to forget only a subset of the previously studied information. Both forms of forgetting are typically observed in recall tests, in which the to-be-forgotten and to-be-remembered information is tested independent of original cuing. Thereby, both LMDF and selective directed forgetting (SDF) have been studied mostly with unrelated item materials (e.g., word lists). The present study examined whether LMDF and SDF generalize to prose material. Participants learned three prose passages, which they were cued to remember or forget after the study of each passage. At the time of testing, participants were asked to recall the three prose passages regardless of original cuing. The results showed no significant differences in recall of the three lists as a function of cuing condition. The findings suggest that LMDF and SDF do not occur with prose material. Future research is needed to replicate and extend these findings with (other) complex and meaningful materials before drawing firm conclusions. If the null effect proves to be robust, this would have implications regarding the ecological validity and generalizability of current LMDF and SDF findings.

Intentional forgetting in younger and older adolescents

“…The inconsistent results in SDF effects caused by different materials were also found between our study and the study of Pastötter and Haciahmet (2022). In their study, meaningful prose materials were adopted and no SDF effects were observed.…”

“…In their study, meaningful prose materials were adopted and no SDF effects were observed. Pastötter and Haciahmet (2022) suggested that the prose might be relatively complex and not influenced by the forgetting cues. In addition, a lower recall rate for List 2 was found in the forgetting condition than in the imagining condition, and there were no recall differences for List 1 between these two conditions.…”

“…Recently, a three-list design of SDF was adopted comprising three distinct lists designated as Lists 1-3 (Kliegl et al, 2013(Kliegl et al, , 2018(Kliegl et al, , 2020Pastötter & Haciahmet, 2022;Racsmány et al, 2019;Sahakyan, 2004;Schmidt et al, 2021). The task-relevant or task-irrelevant items were presented in separate lists, namely Lists 1 and 2, respectively.…”

“…If high‐frequency words were served as studied items, overall memory accuracy might be promoted, thereby improving the discrimination and selectivity between task‐relevant and task‐irrelevant lists. Pastötter and Haciahmet (2022) adopted meaningful prose materials as studied items, and they suggested that the prose might be relatively complex and not influenced by the forgetting cues. The SDF procedure might be potentially affected by material complexity.…”

“…When adopting a three‐list design, some studies detect no SDF effects. Sahakyan (2004) found forgetting of both task‐relevant (List 1) and task‐irrelevant (List 2) items, whereas Pastötter and Haciahmet (2022) did not observe forgetting of either task‐relevant or task‐irrelevant items. One potential explanation might be attributed to the influence of material complexity.…”