Failures to find suppression of episodic memories in the think/no-think paradigm

Abstract

Anderson and Green (2001) had subjects learn paired associates and then selectively suppress responses to some of them. They reported a decrease in final cued recall for responses that subjects had been instructed not to think of and explained their data as resulting from cognitive suppression, a laboratory analog of repression. We report three experiments designed to replicate the suppression/repression results. After subjects learned a series of A-B word pairs (e.g., ordeal-roach), they were then asked to respond to some items and not to think of other items when shown their cues 1, 8, or 16 times. During a final recall test, they were cued with either a same (direct) probe (ordeal-_____) or an independent (indirect) probe (insect-r______). None of our experiments showed reliable suppression effects with either the same or independent-probe tests. Suppression is apparently not a robust experimental phenomenon in the think/no-think paradigm.

The suppressive power of positive thinking: Aiding suppression-induced forgetting in repressive coping

“…How do the substitutes work? As pointed out by others (Bulevich et al, 2006;Hertel & Calcaterra, 2005), the provision of substitutes corresponds to the AÁD phase in a retroactive-interference paradigm for paired-associate learning (Barnes & Underwood, 1959). In fact, we have recently found that the separate contribution of substitutes to forgetting, above effects of target suppression, has its counterpart in paired-associate learning in an experiment by Delprato and Garskof (1969).…”

“…In this final phase, regardless of previous instructions, participants are encouraged to recall all the originally learned targets in response to their cues. Anderson and Green's demonstrations of belowbaseline, suppression-induced forgetting on this test have been replicated by others (Anderson et al, 2004;Depue et al, 2006Depue et al, , 2007Hertel & Calcaterra, 2005;Joormann, Hertel, Brozovich, & Gotlib, 2005, Joormann, Hertel, LeMoult, & Gotlib, 2009Wessel, Wetzels, Jelicic, & Merckelbach, 2005), although failures to replicate have also been documented (e.g., Bulevich, Roediger, Balota, & Butler, 2006).…”

Towards a Cognitive and Neurobiological Model of Motivated Forgetting

“…Although, the negative control effect has been replicated many times, sometimes no reliable effect is observed even though it would be expected (e.g., Bulevich et al, 2006 ;Bergström, Velmans, de Fockert, & Richardson-Klavehn, 2007 ;Mecklinger, Parra, & Waldhauser, 2009 ;Hertel & Mahan, 2008 ;Hertel & Calcaterra, 2005 ) . For instance, Bulevich et al conducted three experiments with variants of the Think/ No-Think paradigm that closely paralleled earlier studies and observed 3%, 4%, and 1% negative control effects on the Same probe test, and similarly small effects on the Independent Probe test.…”

Inhibition and interference in the think/no-think task

“…Anderson and colleagues demonstrated a reliable amount of forgetting in the TNT procedure (see Anderson & Green, 2001;Anderson et al, 2004; for a summary of results from 687 participants, see Levy &, Anderson, 2008), while Bulevich, Roediger, Balota, and Butler (2006), Hertel and Calcaterra (2005), Mecklinger, Parra, and Waldhauser (2009), and Bergström, Velmans, de Fockert, and Richardson-Klavehn (2007) were not able to reproduce the TNT effect. There are two alternative explanations for TNT and the memory effects observed in it (when present).…”