Emotional associative memory is disrupted by directed forgetting

Abstract

Memory is susceptible to voluntary disruption, for instance, through directed forgetting manipulations, in which people are cued to intentionally “forget” information. Until now, directed forgetting has been primarily studied for declarative memory performance. Here, we demonstrate that directed forgetting can also disrupt associative memories acquired through fear conditioning. In two experiments, participants showed poorer recognition and recall of images paired with electric shocks when instructed to forget, compared to when instructed to remember them. Further, they also showed weaker skin conductance responses to images paired with shocks that they were instructed to forget, despite repeated, full reinforcement of the aversive outcome. Our findings provide evidence for the effect of directed forgetting not only on declarative but also physiological read-outs of emotional memory, thereby suggesting that forgetting instructions can be applied to interfere with emotional associative memory.