Suppressing negative materials for remitted depressed individuals: Substitution forgetting and incidental forgetting strategies

Abstract

Intentional forgetting is significantly effective for forgetting unwanted non-emotional material. However, whether the suppressive effect of unaided suppression differs from that of substitution forgetting when applied to negative materials by remitted depressed individuals is unclear. A modified think/no-think (TNT) emotional paradigm including specific strategies (unaided suppression, positive-word substitution, and positive-picture substitution) was used with 84 remitted depressed individuals and 80 controls. The participants in both groups forgot more negative words in the substitution condition than in the unaided condition. The remitted participants forgot more with positive-picture substitution than with positive-word substitution, while the controls showed no difference. Moreover, the participants in both groups forgot more with 0 cue presentations (incidental forgetting) than under any other experimental condition. These results indicate that unaided suppression of negative material in the TNT paradigm shows little suppressive effect. Incidental forgetting and positive-picture substitution forgetting may be better strategies for remitted depressed individuals to forget negative materials.