Destructive effects of “forget” instructions

Abstract

In two experiments, participants were given three lists of words to study and were told to (1) remember all three lists, (2) forget the first list immediately after studying it but try to remember the other two lists, or (3) forget the middle list immediately after studying it but try to remember the first and the last lists. In Experiment 1, unrelated word lists were used, whereas Experiment 2 replicated Experiment 1 with categorical lists. The results from both experiments showed that forgetting the middle list leads also to recall decrement for the first list, which was not intended for forgetting. The results are discussed in terms of the contextual change hypothesis of directed forgetting.

Exploring Mechanisms of Selective Directed Forgetting

“…Whereas the SDF effect has been reported in some studies (Delaney et al, 2009; Gómez-Ariza et al, 2013; Kliegl et al, 2013; Aguirre et al, 2014), it has not been always replicated (Sahakyan, 2004; Storm et al, 2013). Furthermore, as previously mentioned, the SDF effect apparently fits well into two different accounts of intentional forgetting.…”

“…Whereas some studies have reported reliable SDF effects (Delaney et al, 2009; Gómez-Ariza et al, 2013; Kliegl et al, 2013; Aguirre et al, 2014), there have been a couple of reported failures to do so (Sahakyan, 2004; Storm et al, 2013). Hence, although the reasons for these discrepancies are not obvious, we thought important to show that SDF is a replicable phenomenon and introduced standard conditions in Experiments 1 and 2.…”

Rapid communication: Selective cues to forget can fail to cause forgetting

“…The SDF effect also seems at odds with the contextual change account of directed forgetting. Sahakyan (2004) found that when participants studied three lists, the instruction to forget List 2 before learning List 3 not only caused the forgetting of List 2, it caused the forgetting of List 1. This finding is predicted by the contextual change account because the forget cue is assumed to cause a change in context that renders all precue items less recallable.…”

“…The contextual change account, for example, assumes that List 1 becomes less accessible as the consequence of a mental change in context, but it is unclear whether a change in context could selectively impair only a subset of items. In fact, Sahakyan (2004) found that if participants study two lists and are then instructed to forget the second list prior to learning a third list, the first list suffers forgetting in the same way that the second list suffers forgetting.…”

Unblocking memory through directed forgetting

“…Because we did not want participants to realise the connection between the activation list and the subsequent phases of the experiment, no mention was made of it later in the experiment and participants engaged in a 5-min nonverbal distractor task before learning List 1. Another reason we separated target activation from List 1 learning is because prior research has shown that when participants study three lists, instructions to forget the second list can cause the forgetting of the first list (Sahakyan, 2004). By separating the phases we hoped to minimise the possibility of target items suffering directed forgetting.…”