Abstract
People’s memory for new information can be enhanced by cuing them to forget older information, as is shown in list-method directed forgetting (LMDF). In this task, people are cued to forget a previously studied list of items (list 1) and to learn a new list of items (list 2) instead. Such cuing typically enhances memory for the list 2 items and reduces memory for the list 1 items, which reflects effective long-term memory updating. This review focuses on the reset-of-encoding (ROE) hypothesis as a theoretical explanation of the list 2 enhancement effect in LMDF. The ROE hypothesis is based on the finding that encoding efficacy typically decreases with number of encoded items and assumes that providing a forget cue after study of some items (e.g., list 1) resets the encoding process and makes encoding of subsequent items (e.g., early list 2 items) as effective as encoding of previously studied (e.g., early list 1) items. The review provides an overview of current evidence for the ROE hypothesis. The evidence arose from recent behavioral, neuroscientific, and modeling studies that examined LMDF on both an item and a list level basis. The findings support the view that ROE plays a critical role for the list 2 enhancement effect in LMDF. Alternative explanations of the effect and the generalizability of ROE to other experimental tasks are discussed.
Highlights
Long-term memory updating plays a vital role in creating an adaptive human memory system
Bäuml et al (2008) showed that the difference in EEG alpha amplitude during list 2 (L2) encoding between the forget and remember conditions is related to L2 enhancement (L2E), but not to L1 forgetting (L1F). These neurocognitive findings indicate that the forget cue resets neural activity back to list 1 (L1) level and improves the encoding of L2 items, which fits with the ROE hypothesis
On the list level, there is consistent evidence from neurocognitive, model-based, and motor-learning studies indicating that the forget cue can reset post-cue encoding processes, making the encoding of L2 items about as effective as the encoding of L1 items
Summary
Long-term memory updating plays a vital role in creating an adaptive human memory system. The context-change account assumes that forget-cued participants deliberately change mental context between study of the two lists Such change may impair access to L1 context, reduce the list’s interference level, and improve memory for L2 (Sahakyan and Kelley, 2002). Dual-mechanism accounts of LMDF have been suggested, according to which both retrieval and encoding processes can contribute to LMDF (Sahakyan and Delaney, 2003; Pastötter and Bäuml, 2010; Pastötter et al, 2012) One hypothesis reflecting such view is reset-of-encoding (ROE; Pastötter and Bäuml, 2010; Pastötter et al, 2012). We will focus on L2E and review current evidence for the ROE hypothesis
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