Abstract
In this study, we aimed to seek for the neural evidence of the inhibition control process in directed forgetting (DF). We adopted a modified item-method DF paradigm, in which four kinds of cues were involved. In some trials, the words were followed by only a forgetting (F) cue. In the other trials, after a word was presented, a maintenance (M) cue was presented, followed by an explicit remembering (M-R) cue or an forgetting (M-F) cue. Data from 19 healthy adult participants showed that, (1) compared with the remembering cue (i.e., M-R cue), forgetting cues (i.e., M-F cue and F cue) evoked enhanced frontal N2 and reduced parietal P3 and late positive complex (LPC) components, indicating that the forgetting cues might trigger a more intensive cognitive control process and that fewer amounts of cognitive resources were recruited for the further rehearsal process. (2) Both the M cue and the F cue evoked enhanced N2 and decreased P3 and LPC components than the M-R or M-F cue. These results might indicate that compared with the M-R and M-F cues, both the M and F cues evoked a more intensive cognitive control process and decreased attentional resource allocation process. (3) The F cue evoked a decreased P2 component and an enhanced N2 component relative to the other cues (i.e., M-R, M-F, M), indicating that the F cue received fewer amounts of attentional resources and evoked a more intensive cognitive control process. Taken together, forgetting cues were associated with enhanced N2 activity relative to the maintenance rehearsal process or the remembering process, suggesting an enhanced cognitive control process under DF. This cognitive control process might reflect the role of inhibition in DF as attempting to suppress the ongoing encoding.
Highlights
Ignoring or forgetting out-of-date information is essential for memory function (Anderson et al, 2004; Anderson and Hanslmayr, 2014)
event-related potential (ERP) timelocked to the cues indicated that two continuous stages were involved in the forgetting process: the attentional withdrawal process, which was reflected by decreased frontal P2 activity, and the attentional inhibition process, which was reflected by increased frontal N2 activity
The ERP technique is most commonly used in studies of memory, and the P3 and late positive complex (LPC) components are always associated with memory manipulation (Polich, 2007; Gao et al, 2016b)
Summary
Ignoring or forgetting out-of-date information is essential for memory function (Anderson et al, 2004; Anderson and Hanslmayr, 2014). Intentional forgetting might be helpful in reducing this interference (Nowicka et al, 2011; Benoit and Anderson, 2012). Intentional forgetting is usually investigated by adopting an item-method directed forgetting (DF) paradigm. During the study phase, remembering or forgetting cues are provided randomly following each item. To-be-remembered (TBR) items are followed by remembering cues, and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items are followed by forgetting cues. TBR items show superior memory performance over TBF items (Bjork and Woodward, 1973; Basden et al, 1993). This effect is called the DF effect
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