Induced forgetting of pictures across shifts in context.

Abstract

Previous research from our lab has shown that recognizing an object stored in visual long-term memory leads to the forgetting of related objects. Here we ask whether context, an integral aspect to modern models of memory, plays a role in induced forgetting. We manipulated the activated context at test, both externally (e.g., changes in testing room) and internally (e.g., 1 hr and 24 hr later). We found that only interfering with the ability to internally reinstate context after 24 hr eliminated induced forgetting. Thus, we demonstrate that mental context reinstatement plays a role in induced forgetting and specify that models of memory should incorporate internal context reinstatement as an underlying factor of forgetting. We also propose a process model of induced forgetting, discuss limitations of laboratory-based memory tasks, and offer a new term, induced suppression, to collectively describe this robust phenomenon. Public Significance StatementContext plays a substantial role in many models of recognition memory. In 1 such model, forgetting is entirely due to context. The present article sought to test the hypothesis that changes in contextual retrieval underlie forgetting in laboratory-induced forgetting of pictures of real-world objects. We manipulated both spatial and temporal context and found that forgetting survived changes in space, but not changes in time. Induced forgetting was brought back online when the practice phase, which induces forgetting, was also delayed 1 hr and 24 hr. The elimination of induced forgetting after 24 hr appears to be accounted for by models of forgetting that incorporate a role of context, and difficult to account for otherwise. We conclude by presenting a process model of recognition-induced forgetting and suggest that induced forgetting is better characterized as induced suppression.

Retrieval-induced forgetting in declarative and procedural memory: Inhibitory suppression resolves interference between motor responses

“…Retrieval-induced forgetting is an extremely robust and thoroughly replicated phenomenon. It has been observed with a variety of materials, including pictures (Maxcey and Woodman, 2014;Maxcey et al, 2021), text passages (Carroll et al, 2007), factual propositions (Anderson and Bell, 2001), phonological categories (Bajo et al, 2006), visuospatial materials (Ciranni and Shimamura, 1999), and mathematical equations (Campbell and Thompson, 2012). Retrieval-induced forgetting has also been observed outside of the laboratory in a number of applied, real-world contexts including eyewitness memory (Shaw et al, 1995;MacLeod, 2002;Saunders and MacLeod, 2002) and education (Carroll et al, 2007;Little et al, 2011for a review of RIF in applied contexts, see Storm et al, 2015).…”