Forgetting under difficult conditions: Item-method directed forgetting under perceptual processing constraints

Abstract

Intentional forgetting of unwanted items is effortful, yet directed forgetting seems to improve when a secondary task is performed. According to the cognitive load hypothesis of directed forgetting, allocating attentional resources to another task improves forgetting by restricting unwanted encoding of to-be-forgotten (TBF) items. Alternatively, it might be that anything that makes studying more difficult will encourage greater effort to perform the task well and therefore lead to improved intentional forgetting. To assess these proposals we imposed data-processing limitations on study words in an item-method directed forgetting paradigm. Across six experiments, the perceptual quality of study words was manipulated by varying: (1) the duration of study word presentation (Experiments 1-4); (2) the contrast of the displayed word against its visual background (Experiment 5); or (3) the amount of visual background noise on which the word was presented (Experiment 6). In Experiments 4-6, a lexical decision task corroborated the difficulty of study word processing. Despite evidence that relatively low visual contrast and relatively high visual background noise, in particular, create challenging conditions, we found no evidence that perceptual quality impacts the magnitude of the directed forgetting effect. This work suggests that data limitations have no discernible effect on forgetting and corroborate that only attentional resource limitations improve directed forgetting.

Benefits and Detriments of Social Collaborative Memory in Turn-Taking and Directed Forgetting

“…In the list-method procedure, participants are presented with cues, R or F, to guide them to remember or forget the whole list before each cue (Nie & Jiang, 2021; Nie et al, 2021a; Ye et al, 2019). In the item-method procedure, each item is followed by one of the two cues, R or F, and participants are instructed to memorize those items that are followed by the R cue while ignoring those that are followed by the F cue (Berger et al, 2018; Chiu et al, 2021; Gallant et al, 2017; Marevic et al, 2018; Nie & Jiang, 2021; Taylor & Ivanoff, 2021; Ye et al, 2019). The items preceding these cues are specified as “to-be-remembered” and “to-be-forgotten” (TBR and TBF) items, respectively.…”

“…By these procedures, particularly the item-method procedure, subsequent memory testing has normally discovered that TBR items are better remembered than TBF items, and the difference between them has been designated as the DF effect (Berger et al, 2018; Chiu et al, 2021; Marevic et al, 2018; Nie & Jiang, 2021; Taylor & Ivanoff, 2021; Ye et al, 2019). Theoretical interpretation for the DF effect is that upon encountering items in encoding, participants temporarily store both TBR and TBF items in working memory, but their status is altered soon by the follow-up cues: (a) the R cue triggers elaborative rehearsal towards TBR items and allows them to be transferred into long-term memory; (b) the F cue forces the memory traces of TBF items to decay and cuts off their access to long-term memory through active suppression .…”

“…Theoretical interpretation for the DF effect is that upon encountering items in encoding, participants temporarily store both TBR and TBF items in working memory, but their status is altered soon by the follow-up cues: (a) the R cue triggers elaborative rehearsal towards TBR items and allows them to be transferred into long-term memory; (b) the F cue forces the memory traces of TBF items to decay and cuts off their access to long-term memory through active suppression . These processes jointly prompt the TBR items to become more accessible than the TBF items in a subsequent test, creating the DF effect (Berger et al, 2018; Chiu et al, 2021; Gallant et al, 2017; Marevic et al, 2018; Taylor & Ivanoff, 2021; Ye et al, 2019).…”