EEG studies of list method directed forgetting for emotional and neutral words

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Event Abstract Back to Event EEG studies of list method directed forgetting for emotional and neutral words Anne Hauswald1* and Johanna Kissler1 1 Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Germany Directed forgetting refers to the phenomenon that people can intentionally forget material designated as unimportant. In directed forgetting experiments, two lists are presented in sequence with the first list marked as ‘to-be-forgotten’ in the F condition (F-list 1) and as ‘to-be-remembered’ in the R condition (R-list 2), while in both conditions the second list is assigned to be remembered. Recall of F-list 1 is usually reduced compared to R-list 1 (costs of directed forgetting) while recall of F-list 2 is enhanced compared to R-List 2 (benefits of directed forgetting). Additionally, ‘forgetting’ of F-list 1 leads to a reduction of proactive interference on F-list 2, while in the R condition proactive interference on consecutive lists occurs. These influences of instruction (forget vs. remember) on list recall are explained either by single-process accounts of retrieval inhibition (Basden & Basden, 1993) or dual-process accounts that assume an interaction of context change (Sahakyan & Kelley, 2002) and change of encoding strategy to be responsible for the effects. . Using behavioural and electrophysiological measures during encoding, we explored underlying processes of list-method directed forgetting of words varying in emotional content (neutral and unpleasant). In four experiments, EEG was recorded from 64 channels while subjects learned four lists of words with the lists being either neutral or unpleasant. In the surprise free recall test, directed forgetting was found in all experiments with varying amounts of costs and benefits. Also, proactive interference seemed to be dependent on context change modulations: Inducing proactive interference by changing the valence between list 1 and list 2 led to a stronger reduction of proactive interference in both the F condition and the R condition than when no valence change occurred. Additionally, electrophysiology showed increased activity during the presentation of words that followed the F-list 1 compared to those following the R-list 1. This activity difference occurred in P300-like time windows and was maximal in parietal regions when neutral words were assigned as ‘to-be-forgotten’ and in frontal areas when unpleasant words were the target of forgetting. This enhanced activity indicates that additional resources (e.g. associated with a change of encoding strategy) are recruited during directed forgetting, thus showing that encoding processes are affected by list method directed forgetting. Changes of the mental context seem to play a crucial role in behavioural outcomes. Furthermore, the results suggest that, at least for verbal material, healthy subjects are able to control their episodic memory and inhibit irrelevant contents regardless of their emotional significance. However, the neural substrates sub-serving this ability may differ as indicated by the different topographies. Conference: 10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience, Bodrum, Türkiye, 1 Sep - 5 Sep, 2008. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Memory & Learning Citation: Hauswald A and Kissler J (2008). EEG studies of list method directed forgetting for emotional and neutral words. Conference Abstract: 10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.01.278 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 09 Dec 2008; Published Online: 09 Dec 2008. * Correspondence: Anne Hauswald, Department of Psychology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany, Anne.Hauswald@uni-konstanz.de Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. 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