'Forget me (not)?' - Remembering Forget-Items Versus Un-Cued Items in Directed Forgetting.

Bastian Zwissler,Johanna M Kissler,Helena Fischer,Sebastian Schindler,Christian Plewnia

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01741

Bastian Zwissler, Johanna M Kissler + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01741

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Abstract

Humans need to be able to selectively control their memories. This capability is often investigated in directed forgetting (DF) paradigms. In item-method DF, individual items are presented and each is followed by either a forget- or remember-instruction. On a surprise test of all items, memory is then worse for to-be-forgotten items (TBF) compared to to-be-remembered items (TBR). This is thought to result mainly from selective rehearsal of TBR, although inhibitory mechanisms also appear to be recruited by this paradigm. Here, we investigate whether the mnemonic consequences of a forget instruction differ from the ones of incidental encoding, where items are presented without a specific memory instruction. Four experiments were conducted where un-cued items (UI) were interspersed and recognition performance was compared between TBR, TBF, and UI stimuli. Accuracy was encouraged via a performance-dependent monetary bonus. Experiments varied the number of items and their presentation speed and used either letter-cues or symbolic cues. Across all experiments, including perceptually fully counterbalanced variants, memory accuracy for TBF was reduced compared to TBR, but better than for UI. Moreover, participants made consistently fewer false alarms and used a very conservative response criterion when responding to TBF stimuli. Thus, the F-cue results in active processing and reduces false alarm rate, but this does not impair recognition memory beyond an un-cued baseline condition, where only incidental encoding occurs. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Highlights

Humans need to manage their cognitive resources in order to control their behavior
Results indicate that while selective rehearsal may account for to-be-remembered items (TBR) memory superiority, to-be-forgotten items (TBF) seem to trigger active, noninhibitory, memory processing that exceeds the one of completely un-cued, incidentally encoded, items
TBF were recognized more accurately than uncued items (UI), overall confirming that selective rehearsal can account for the TBR advantage and that TBF induces, active, albeit for recognition memory seemingly non-inhibitory, processing

Summary

Introduction

Humans need to manage their cognitive resources in order to control their behavior. We are able to ignore irrelevant stimuli and withhold pre-potent automatic responses to remain focused on a current task, this is effortful and there are clear limits to human capacities for cognitive control (e.g., Botvinick et al, 2001). In listmethod DF, participants are shown pairs of lists and after the first list of such a pair they are instructed to either remember all items on the previous list for future testing or to forget this list In both cases a second list is presented for further learning. The between-list forget instruction typically results in poorer memory for list 1 items and better memory for list 2 items, whereas the reverse is true following the remember instruction Because this pattern is only apparent in free recall, but not in recognition testing, retrieval inhibition has been a dominant account for the list-method DF effect (for review, see Anderson and Hanslmayr, 2014)

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