Examining the impact of thought substitution on intentional forgetting in induced and naturally occurring dysphoria

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to determine if natural and induced dysphoria is associated with impaired forgetting and, whether a thought-substitution strategy would ameliorate any observed deficits. Study 1: 36 dysphoric & 36 non-dysphoric participants learnt a series of emotional word pairs. Participants were subsequently presented with some of the cues and were asked to recall the targets or prevent the targets from coming to mind. Half of the participants were provided with substitute words to recall instead of the original targets (aided suppression). At final memory testing, participants were asked to recall the targets to all cues. Dysphoric participants exhibited impaired forgetting, even when using a thought substitution strategy. Non-dysphoric participants, however, were able to use substitutes to suppress words. Study 2: 50 healthy participants initially completed the aided condition of the forgetting task. Participants were then given a positive or negative mood-induction, followed by another version of the forgetting task. Although all participants showed a forgetting effect prior to the mood-induction, only the positive group was successful at forgetting after the mood induction. Taken together, these findings do not support the utility of thought-substitution as an aid to forgetting in individuals in a naturally or induced dysphoric mood.

Investigating the mediating effect of working memory on intentional forgetting in dysphoria

“…Prior to the TNT task, participants were invited to complete the operation Span task (OSPAN; Turner & Engle, 1989 ). In line with our previous findings (Noreen & Ridout, 2016a , b ), we predicted that dysphoric participants would exhibit impaired suppression-induced forgetting of ‘to-be-forgotten’ words compared to non-dysphoric individuals. In line with Hubbard et al ( 2016 ), we expected that dysphoric participants would exhibit poorer working memory capacity (lower OSPAN scores) than would the non-dysphoric group.…”

“…For example, Joormann et al ( 2009 ) used the TNT task and found that clinically depressed participants showed impaired forgetting of negative words. Impaired forgetting on the TNT has also been observed in participants with dysphoria (Hertel & Gerstle, 2003 ; Noreen & Ridout, 2016a , b ), although the deficit in these participants was not limited to negative words.…”

“…Critically, depressed individuals often fail to prevent irrelevant material from coming to mind (Gotlib & Joormann, 2010 ; Joormann & Gotlib, 2008 ). For example, there is a growing body of work showing that individuals with clinical and subclinical depression (referred to as dysphoria) have difficulties in preventing unwanted memories from coming to mind (Hertel & Gerstle, 2003 ; Howell & Conway, 1992 ; Joormann, Hertel, LeMoult & Gotlib, 2009 ; Joormann & Tran, 2009 ; Noreen & Ridout, 2016a , b ). Interestingly, evidence suggests that attempts by depressed participants to suppress unwanted memories often lead to enhanced memory for this ‘to-be-forgotten’ material (e.g.…”

“…Interestingly, evidence suggests that attempts by depressed participants to suppress unwanted memories often lead to enhanced memory for this ‘to-be-forgotten’ material (e.g. Noreen & Ridout, 2016a , b ).…”

Reconsidering unconscious persistence: Suppressing unwanted memories reduces their indirect expression in later thoughts

“…First, growing evidence suggests that inhibitory processes engaged to suppress retrieval of unwanted memories reduce explicit memory for the suppressed events, contributing to a phenomenon known as suppression-induced forgetting ( Anderson & Green, 2001 ; see Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014 for a review). Notably, difficulties in forgetting via retrieval suppression have been associated with worse mental health status: impaired suppression-induced forgetting has been found in individuals suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder ( Catarino, Kupper, Werner-Seidler, Dalgleish, & Anderson, 2015 ), high ruminators ( Fawcett et al, 2015 , Hertel et al, 2018 ), people with higher trait anxiety ( Marzi, Regina, & Righi, 2014 ; see also Benoit, Davies, & Anderson, 2016 ), and in participants suffering from depression ( Hertel and Gerstle, 2003 , Noreen and Ridout, 2016a , Noreen and Ridout, 2016b , Zhang et al, 2016 ). In contrast, better suppression-induced forgetting ability predicts reduced intrusiveness of a traumatic film over a one-week period ( Streb, Mecklinger, Anderson, Lass-Hennemann, & Michael, 2016 ) and also predicts reduced negative affect associated with suppressed content ( Gagnepain, Hulbert, & Anderson, 2017 ).…”