Directed forgetting of actions by younger and older adults

Enactment and retrieval

“…Here, SPTs were better recalled than VTs. Although the enactment effect is typically more robust in within-subjects, mixed-list designs (e.g., Engelkamp & Dehn, 2000; Engelkamp & Zimmer, 1984;Steffens, 1999;Steffens et al, 2003), the enactment effect can also be found in between-subjects and pure-list designs (e.g., Earles & Kersten, 2002;Koriat & Pearlman-Avnion, 2003). The more puzzling question is why the SPT effect was significant in Experiment 2 and not in Experiments 1 and 3.…”

“…(3) Finally, and perhaps most importantly, enactment is unique relative to the other variables producing design effects, due to the relative automaticity demonstrated at encoding. Typically, enactment does not yield the same primacy, levels of processing, rehearsal, or directed-forgetting effects (Earles & Kersten, 2002;Engelkamp, 1998) as those seen with verbal materials. These characteristics imply that action memory is less subject to controlled encoding processes, raising the possibility that the enactment advantage arises due to factors operative at retrieval.…”

Inhibitory control of memory in normal ageing: Dissociation between impaired intentional and preserved unintentional processes

“…Indeed, a decrease in the directed forgetting effects associated with normal aging was previously observed in working memory and episodic memory tasks when the item method was used (Andrès et al, 2004;Earles & Kersten, 2002;Gamboz & Russo, 2002;Hogge et al, 1998;Sego et al, 2006;Zacks et al, 1996, experiment 1). We have also observed a similar pattern of impaired performance on the Hayling task to that reported by Andrès and Van der Linden (2000) concerning response times on part B and the semantic relatedness score.…”

“…In these tasks, information that subjects have to process are first presented and next followed by a cue indicating if the information must (or not) be kept in memory for later recall or recognition. Thus, greater directed forgetting effects were reported in elderly than young subjects with working memory (Andrès, Van der Linden, & Parmentier, 2004) and episodic memory tasks when the item method (in which the "remember" or "forget" cue directly follows the presentation of each item) of the directed forgetting paradigm was used (Earles & Kersten, 2002;Gamboz & Russo, 2002;Hogge, Adam, & Collette, 2008;Sego, Golding, & Gottlob, 2006;, experiment 1) but not when the list method (in which the cue is presented after the whole list of items) was used (Sego et al, 2006;Zellner & Bäuml, 2006;see, however, Zacks et al, 1996, experiment 2). Otherwise, studies that measured inhibitory effects in memory using the fan effect (e.g., Anderson, 1974) demonstrated that the retrieval of previously learned memories in older adults is slowed by the enrichment of target information with irrelevant associations .…”

Limits on the role of retrieval cues in memory for actions: Enactment effects in the absence of object cues in the environment

“…There are two possible explanations for this. First, whereas there have been many demonstrations of enactment effects in free recall, almost all of the studies have used mixed lists that included phrases with imagined objects and phrases with the objects present, whether they were body parts or objects typically or incidentally present in the experimental environment (e.g., clap your hands, point to the door, clean the glasses), and the researchers have typically analyzed the enactment effect collapsed across all types of phrases (e.g., Earles & Kersten, 2002;Norris & West, 1993). Retrieval cues have thus often been present for at least a few phrases (e.g., von Essen, 2005).…”