Intentional Forgetting Research Articles

Action plan discarding leads to unbinding of action features.

Action planning can be construed as the temporary binding of action features to form a representation known as an action file. This file is distinct from other possible, but currently not required actions of the behavioral repertoire. To further this action file approach, we investigated what happens with an initially planned action, which however, is discarded before execution. In two experiments we found consistent evidence for a quick unbinding of action features with discarding. Other possible mechanisms that action discarding might invoke, be it the paradox strengthening of a discarded action plan, the selective suppression of the otherwise intact plan, or the global suppression of all subsequent action, were not or at least less consistently supported. These findings provide a novel perspective on inhibitory action control, which we discuss with respect to its applications to other instances of such inhibitory control as studied in multitasking, stop-signal, directed forgetting, or response-reprogramming paradigms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Strategic naïveté, intentional forgetting, and interpretive labor: ethnographic methods in a carceral setting

Strategic naïveté, intentional forgetting, and interpretive labor: ethnographic methods in a carceral setting

The role of prior familiarisation and meaningfulness of verbal and visual stimuli on directed forgetting

ABSTRACT Intentional forgetting of unwanted information is a crucial cognitive function that is often studied with directed forgetting (DF) procedure, whereby cuing some study materials with Forget (F) instruction impairs their memory compared to cuing with Remember (R) instruction. This study investigates how the nature of information (verbal or pictorial), its semantic significance (meaningful or meaningless), and the degree of prior episodic familiarity influence DF. Before the DF phase, stimuli were familiarised by pre-exposing them 0, 2, or 6 times in a prior preview phase. Finally, memory for all items was assessed with old/new recognition test. Experiment 1 employed words, Experiment 2 utilised fractal images, Experiment 3 featured both meaningful and meaningless object images, and Experiment 4 used words and nonwords. Our results indicate that materials that produced better memory performance are not always harder to intentionally forget. Previewed items showed reduced DF compared to non-previewed items regardless of the nature of information, and meaningless stimuli are challenging to intentionally forget regardless of their degrees of familiarisation unless they are meaningless verbal materials. Collectively, the results highlight the importance of joint consideration of the stimulus format, its meaningfulness, and its episodic familiarity in understanding conditions that interact with intentional forgetting.

Hand in hand: Consuming symbols, language and identity in post‐ETA Basque society

AbstractThis study examines the evolution of ethnic symbol consumption in the Basque Country following the end of ETA's violent activities in 2011. It delves into the shifting political and cultural context of the Basque provinces during this period, underscoring the impact that terrorism and its cessation have had on creating distinct patterns of cultural consumption. The focus then turns towards the case of the ‘Hand of Irulegi’, an Iron Age relic discovered in 2022 that allegedly contains the oldest inscription in an ancestor of Euskera—the Basque language. The paper argues that the rapid adoption of the Hand of Irulegi by Basque society as an ethnic symbol is directly related to transformations in the conception of Basque identity in the aftermath of ETA's dissolution. These transformations include, mainly, the intentional forgetting of recent historical events by a large segment of Basque citizens and the emergence of Euskera as the main fulcrum of contemporary Basque cultural identity. The Hand, due to its chronological remoteness and its exclusive association with the Basque language, seems to be custom‐made to serve as a symbol for this new type of identification.

Intentional forgetting in younger and older adolescents

AbstractIntentional forgetting exhibits limited efficacy in children but demonstrates resilience in adults. This study aimed to explore the developmental trends and underlying mechanisms of intentional forgetting in adolescents. Students from grades 7th and 9th were recruited to perform the modified list‐method directed forgetting (DF, Experiment 1) and selective directed forgetting (SDF, Experiment 2) tasks. In Experiment 1, both graders showed typical DF effects. The 9th graders forgot more List 1 compared to the 7th graders in the forgetting condition, indicating a stronger DF ability for the former group. In Experiment 2, an SDF effect was observed for the 9th graders but was absent for the 7th graders. Additionally, a weaker forgetting effect was induced by imagining cues relative to forgetting cues in both experiments. These results demonstrated that DF and SDF abilities in adolescents improved with age and might be mediated by inhibitory control rather than changes in mental context.

Intentional forgetting needs intentional remembering.

Episodic memories may become suppressed, both incidentally and intentionally. Incidental suppression is a result of a competition induced by interfering items or responses. In contrast, intentional suppression is said to result from conscious attempts to suppress certain memory items, and should thus not depend on competition induced by interfering items or responses. However, intentional suppression is typically engendered using the Think/No-Think paradigm, in which participants are required to retrieve some target items and to suppress others. Therefore, rather than intentional suppression, forgetting in this paradigm may reflect incidental suppression of No-Think items induced by interference via prior retrieval of the Think items. To distinguish between these possibilities, we tested participants (n = 40) using an adjusted suppression paradigm, which did not include the Think condition (ExcludeThink paradigm) and compared it with the standard suppression paradigm (IncludeThink paradigm; n = 39) which included a think condition. We found that suppression was not observed in the ExcludeThink paradigm, but only in the IncludeThink paradigm. These results indicate that interference via prior retrieval is necessary to induce forgetting. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The interplay between memory control and emotion regulation.

Memory control (MC) and emotion regulation (ER) are critical cognitive functions for adapting to life's challenges, drawing significant research attention. Accumulating evidence suggests these processes are interrelated, yet a comprehensive discussion of their interplay remains lacking. We introduce an integrative framework exploring the mutual influence between MC and ER, composed of two interrelated branches: first, MC aids in ER through the retrieval ofpositive memories, intentional forgetting of undesirable content, and the adaptive updating of memory stores. Second, ER impacts MC by upregulating positivity and downregulating negativity in memories. The framework spotlights the need to harness MC-ER interplay for future research. Potential directions include utilizing MC to amplify ER capabilities, training ER skills to refine MC performance, and modulating the cognitive and neural overlapping of both processes to improve both functions. Delving into the MC-ER nexus advances understanding of the intricate emotion-memory relationship and holds great promise for developing novel behavioral interventions.

Bluntschli, C’est Moi? International legal history and hagiography

ABSTRACT Hagiography comprises idealised biographical histories of religious, political, cultural, and academic figures. While often centring on character, they also record academic accomplishments that evidence a person's worth as an exemplar. Critically, academic hagiographies are central to canon creation. This article investigates if hagiographical tendencies within international legal history authenticates the modern depiction of the international lawyer akin to the form of the nineteenth century white male intellectual. The article asks whether there is a role for (anti)hagiography to establish sites of personal identification. Within international law, the historical turn studies both the role of international law in global histories and the discipline, but the turn can be explained as a form of canon creation, within which hagiography plays a role, and within that, processes of aphasia, intentional forgetting, and international legal silences. This article reflects on hagiography as an unacknowledged international legal historiographic methodology and sets out a nine-part method for establishing an (anti)hagiographic approach to personal identification with the canon.

Item-method directed forgetting is (usually) impaired in clinical populations: A meta-analysis.

The item-method directed forgetting paradigm is a common laboratory task used to measure memory control. While impaired memory control may contribute to the development and/or maintenance of a variety of psychological disorders, comparisons between clinical and nonclinical groups using this paradigm have been inconsistent-even within the same disorder. A systematic search for related articles utilizing clinical populations was conducted revealing 823 articles of which 36 met inclusion criteria. Raw mean differences were calculated and aggregated using Bayesian multilevel random-effects models. These models revealed a significant difference in the magnitude of directed forgetting between clinical and control populations, such that clinical populations (collapsing across all disorders or combining only the critical anxiety and depression clusters) exhibited a reduced directed forgetting effect. This difference tended to be larger in clinical (as opposed to clinical-analog) populations and in older samples. These results support the notion that item-method directed forgetting provides a suitable measure of memory control sensitive to real-world control deficits and further implies that memory control deficits may contribute to mental illness (although causality remains to be determined). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Differentiating the DF effect in episodic memory: evaluating the contribution of the procedures of collaborative memory

Existing research has demonstrated a significant directed forgetting (DF) effect in memory. However, it remains unclear whether this phenomenon would occur in the context of interpersonal collaboration. Additionally, the contribution of emotional valence to the DF effect in item memory and source memory (which are subtypes of episodic memory) also needs to be explored. To address these issues, we conducted two experiments that combined the collaborative memory paradigm with the item-method procedure of DF. In both experiments, positive, neutral, or negative words were presented as stimuli, each followed by an R/F cue during encoding. We conducted two recalls, labeled Recall 1 and Recall 2, which consisted of both memory tasks. Recall 1 was performed either individually or collaboratively, whereas Recall 2 was done individually. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 adopted the free-flowing procedure and the turn-taking procedure of collaborative memory, respectively. We obtained three implications from our current findings. (a) The occurrence of the DF effect in item memory was found regardless of the procedure of collaborative memory, and it was insensitive to the emotional valence of words or to whether participants had collaborated or not. These patterns demonstrate that both the mechanisms of elaborative rehearsal and active suppression/encoding blocking were engaged across words of different emotional valences and in nominal and collaborative circumstances. (b) In source memory, the DF effect showed different patterns in ongoing and post-collaborative memory, which underpins the dual-process models. (c) The amplitude of the DF effect was sensitive to the interaction of emotional valence by the status of collaboration, and the impact of collaboration differed between the two experiments, offering telling evidence of different aspects of the retrieval strategy disruption hypothesis (RSDH). Directions for identifying more influential factors are put forward.

Recent findings on organizational unlearning and intentional forgetting research (2019-2022).

This mini review aims at summarizing the current state-of-the-art of empirical unlearning and intentional forgetting (U/IF) research at the individual, team, and organizational level. It adds to an earlier review and incorporates 31 recent studies from 2019 to 2022. The review reveals that predictors based on the organization's adaptation context (e.g., competitive intensity), organization level (e.g., leadership exploration activities), individual task-related (e.g., features of the routines changed), and person-related level (e.g., cognitive control strategies) variables relate to process variables, such as the type of U/IF, the U/IF content (e.g., success beliefs or failure beliefs), and information processing variables (e.g., team information processing). The outcome variables are at the organizational level (e.g., cross-boundary innovation), team level performance level, the individual task performance level (e.g., errors), and person-related level (e.g., self-esteem). The analyzed studies at the team and organizational levels preferred cross-sectional study designs or in-depth qualitative methods, which severely limits the possibility of making causal statements. In contrast, at the individual-level studies use longitudinal designs as well to make temporal aspects of U/IF visible. But these individual level results are limited in terms of their generalizability to other levels. Even though all studies make valuable contribution to the understanding of antecedents and outcomes of U/IF, the temporal and process-related aspects of how U/IF unfolds at the different levels and subsequent options for its deliberate facilitation remain empirically little elaborated. It is proposed that in addition to studying the antecedents and consequences of U/IF in cross sectional designs, the topic needs more longitudinal designs to capture the nature of the U/IF processes in organizations.

A computational account of item-based directed forgetting for nonwords: Incorporating orthographic representations in MINERVA 2.

Recent research on item-method directed forgetting demonstrates that forget instructions not only decrease recognition for targets, but also decrease false recognition for foils from the same semantic categories as targets instructed to be forgotten. According to the selective rehearsal account of directed forgetting, this finding suggests that remember instructions may engage elaborative rehearsal of the category-level information of items. In contrast to this explanation, Reid and Jamieson (Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 76(2), 75-86, 2022) proposed that the differential rates of false recognition may emerge at retrieval when foils from "remember" and "forget" categories are compared to traces in memory. Using MINERVA S, an instance model of memory based on MINERVA 2 that incorporates structured semantic representations, Reid and Jamieson successfully simulated lower false recognition for foils from "forget" categories without assuming rehearsal of category-level information. In this study, we extend the directed forgetting paradigm to categories consisting of orthographically related nonwords. Presumably participants would have difficulty rehearsing category-level information for these items because they would have no pre-experimental knowledge of these categories. To simulate the findings in MINERVA S, we imported structured orthographic representations rather than semantic representations. The model not only predicted differential rates of false recognition for foils from "remember" and "forget" categories, but also predicted higher rates of false recognition overall than what was observed for semantic categories. The empirical data closely matched these predictions. These data suggest that differential rates of false recognition due to remember and forget instructions emerge at retrieval when participants compare recognition probes to traces stored in memory.

Effects of emotion and sex difference on item-method directed forgetting

It is crucial to remember or forget others' faces in daily life. People can intentionally forget things they wish to forget, a phenomenon called directed forgetting (DF). This study examined the effects of stimuli's emotions and sex differences in participants and stimuli on DF. We used happy and angry faces as the items in a typical item-method paradigm and conducted three behavioral experiments. In Experiment 1, we recruited 60 participants to examine how emotions of stimuli and sex differences in participants and stimuli affected DF. In Experiment 2, we recruited 60 female participants and manipulated the durations of items presented during the study phase to examine whether the selective rehearsal theory was held. In Experiment 3, we recruited 50 female participants and attached recognition cues to the items presented during the test phase to examine whether the inhibitory control theory was held. We treated the sex of participants in Experiment 1, the durations of items presented during the study phase in Experiment 2 as the between-subject factors, and emotion and sex of stimuli as the with-subject factors. We conducted the mixed-design ANOVA for corrected hit rate, sensitivity, and bias based on the signal detection theory. As a result, we found that DF occurred easily for male participants, whereas not for female participants because of females' superior memorial performances and stronger sensitivities. Furthermore, we found that female participants owned the best and worst recognition rates for angry female faces and happy male faces, respectively. Our results supported the selective rehearsal theory, suggesting manipulations during the study phase had the potential to help females forget what they wished to forget. We presumed that psychologists and therapists should pay attention to the roles of sex difference in twofold, self and others, when studying people's memory and forgetting. Furthermore, the sensitivity of self and the emotion of others should be considered as well.

Intentional forgetting in excessive behavior: direct suppression and thought substitution

Excessive behavior refers to certain conduct or activities that exceed normal or healthy levels in terms of degree or frequency and may result in negative consequences for individuals. The present study suggests that negative memories underlie the recurrence and maintenance of excessive behaviors, and investigates whether individuals with excessive behavior might benefit from strategies of intentional forgetting to forget negative memories. In a modified think/no-think (TNT) task, 36 excessive gaming individuals and 36 controls were randomly assigned to two forgetting strategies: direct suppression and thought substitution. Direct suppression involved trying not to recall paired targets in no-think trials, while thought substitution involved participants being given substitutes to recall. The results indicate that thought substitution exhibited significant below-baseline forgetting and produced larger forgetting effects than direct suppression in both the excessive gaming group and the control group. These findings suggest that thought substitution may be a more effective approach to counteract unwanted memories among individuals with excessive behavior. The idea of substitution in this study could also provide enlightenment on interventions for excessive behavior.

The effect of chronic academic stress on intentional forgetting.

This study investigated whether chronic academic stress could affect the directed forgetting (DF) process. Both the stress group (undergoing preparation for a major academic examination) and the control group performed a DF task. A forgetting cue was presented after a to-be-forgotten (TBF) word, whereas no cue appeared after a to-be-remembered (TBR) item in the study phase. An old/new recognition test was used in the test phase. The results showed that (1) the stress group showed a higher level of self-reported stress, state anxiety, negative affect, and decreased cortisol awakening response (CAR) compared with the control group, suggesting a higher level of stress for the stress group. (2) Both groups showed superior recognition performance of TBR than TBF items, suggesting a DF effect. (3) The stress group showed inferior recognition performance of TBF items and an enhanced DF effect compared with the control group. These results demonstrated that the intentional memory control process might be enhanced under chronic academic stress.

Benefits and Detriments of Social Collaborative Memory in Turn-Taking and Directed Forgetting.

Collaborative recall by groups of people can evoke both memory detriments (e.g., collaborative inhibition) and benefits (e.g., error pruning and post-collaborative memory benefit). Yet, it remains indeterminate whether these effects are due to the emotional valence of stimuli and/or the specific subtypes of episodic memory tested (i.e., item memory and source memory), and whether they are related to the research procedure of directed forgetting (DF). We introduced item-method DF into collaborative memory research using a turn-taking procedure. The to-be-recalled words were studied in different emotional valences and were followed by either an R or F cue, which, respectively, instructed participants to remember or forget the words presented. We conducted two recall sessions (Recall 1 and Recall 2) that included the two subtypes of episodic memory. Recall 1 was performed either individually or collaboratively, while Recall 2 was always performed individually. We observed three major findings: (a) a collaborative memory decrement - collaborative inhibition - was minimally affected in both item memory and source memory tasks by either the emotional valence of the stimuli or the DF cue; (b) a collaborative memory benefit - error pruning of item memory - persisted within both ongoing and post-collaboration, while error pruning of source memory only presented in ongoing collaboration, thus demonstrating the relevance of dual-process models that differentiate automatic familiarity and effortful recollection processes; and (c) there was no post-collaborative memory benefit, indicating the importance of the type of collaborative procedure. We discuss these results in terms of various theories, including the retrieval strategy disruption hypothesis (RSDH) which asserts that memory strategies tend to be disrupted in collaboration but are facilitated within post-collaboration. Also, we describe the implications of these results and directions for exploring other influential factors in future research.

Effects of cognitive reappraisal on directed forgetting of negative emotional memory: an ERP study.

This study aimed to adopt the item-method directed forgetting (DF) paradigm to explore the effects of cognitive reappraisal on intentional forgetting of negative emotional pictures. Behavioral results showed that the recognition of to-be-forgotten but remembered (TBF-r) was significantly greater than that of to-be-remembered and remembered (TBR-r) in the recognition test, which was the opposite result to the DF effect. Event-related potential (ERP) results showed that in the 450-660ms (ms) of cue presentation, the F-cue of the cognitive reappraisal condition (imagining the upcoming pictures to be "fake or performed by actors" to avoid or reduce the intensity of negative emotions caused by the pictures) elicited more positive late positive potential (LPP) than passive viewing (participants watched freely and paid attention to the characters, scenes, and other details in the picture). This indicated that cognitive reappraisal required stronger inhibition than passive viewing for the to-be- forgotten (TBF) items. In the test phase, both the TBR-r and TBF-r items in the cognitive reappraisal condition evoked more positive ERP than correctly rejected (CR) unseen items in the study phase, which induced the frontal old/new effect (P200, 160-240ms). In addition, this study also found that the LPP amplitudes of 450-660ms in the frontal area induced by F-cues in cognitive reappraisal were significantly negatively correlated with the LPP amplitudes of 300-3500ms induced by cognitive reappraisal instructions, and positive waves in the frontal area were significantly positively correlated with the TBF-r behavioral results. However, these results were not observed in the passive viewing group. The above results show that cognitive reappraisal enhances the retrieval ability for TBR and TBF items, and TBF-r is associated with cognitive reappraisal in the study phase and inhibitory control of F-cues.

Fake news reminders and veracity labels differentially benefit memory and belief accuracy for news headlines

Fake news exposure can negatively affect memory and beliefs, thus sparking debate about whether to repeat misinformation during corrections. The once-prevailing view was that repeating misinformation increases its believability and should thus be avoided. However, misinformation reminders have more recently been shown to enhance memory and belief accuracy. We replicated such reminder benefits in two experiments using news headlines and compared those benefits against the effects of veracity labeling. Specifically, we examined the effects of labeling real news corrections to enhance conflict salience (Experiment 1) and labeling fake news on its debut to encourage intentional forgetting (Experiment 2). Participants first viewed real and fake news headlines with some fake news labeled as false. Participants then saw labeled and unlabeled real news corrections; labeled corrections appeared alone or after fake news reminders. Reminders promoted the best memory and belief accuracy, whereas veracity labels had selective effects. Correction labels led to intermediate memory and belief accuracy, whereas fake news labels improved accuracy for beliefs more than memory. The extent that real and fake news details were recalled together correlated with overall memory and belief differences across conditions, implicating a critical role for integrative encoding that was promoted most by fake news reminders.

Depersonalization Disorder: Directed Forgetting as a Function of Emotionality

ABSTRACT There exists some evidence for a link between dissociation and emotionally avoidant information processing, yet studies to date have been contradictory. Our goal was to investigate emotionally avoidant processing in Depersonalization Disorder (DDD) using a directed forgetting (DF) paradigm. Thirty-two participants with DSM-IV DDD and 40 healthy controls performed an item-method DF task using positive, negative, and neutral words. Participants were also administered the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) and the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). The DDD group demonstrated significantly lower directed forgetting for negative, but not positive or neutral, words compared to controls. In the combined sample, DES total, depersonalization/derealization, and amnesia scores significantly inversely predicted explicit cued recall for to-be-forgotten negative words (higher dissociation, lower forgetting), while the CTQ was not predictive. The findings do not support emotionally avoidant processing in this paradigm; rather, DDD may be characterized by a diminished capacity to actively control attention and direct it away from emotionally disturbing material when instructed to do so.

Different ways to forget: Electrophysiological mechanisms underlying item-method directed forgetting of angry and neutral faces.

Emotional stimuli, including faces, receive preferential processing and are consequently better remembered than neutral stimuli. Therefore, they may also be more resistant to intentional forgetting. The present study investigates the behavioral and electrophysiological consequences of instructions to selectively remember or forget angry and neutral faces. In an item-method directed forgetting experiment, angry and neutral faces were randomly presented to 25 student participants (4 males). Each face was followed by an instruction to either forget or remember it and the participants’ EEG was recorded. Later, recognition memory was unexpectedly tested for all items. Behaviorally, both hit and false alarm rates were higher for angry alike than for neutral faces. Directed forgetting occurred for neutral and angry faces as reflected in a reduction of both recognition accuracy and response bias. Event-related potentials revealed a larger late positive potential (LPP, 450 – 700 ms) for angry than for neutral faces during face presentation and, in line with selective rehearsal of remember items, a larger LPP following remember than forget cues. Forget cues generally elicited a larger frontal N2 (280 – 400 ms) than remember cues, in line with the forget instruction eliciting conflict monitoring and inhibition. Selectively following angry faces, a larger cue-evoked P2 (180 – 280 ms) was observed. Notably, forget cues following angry faces elicited a larger late frontal positivity (450 - 700 ms) potentially signaling conflict resolution. Thus, whereas both angry and neutral faces are subject to directed forgetting, on a neural level, different mechanisms underlie the effect. While directed forgetting for neutral faces may be achieved primarily by selective rehearsal, directed forgetting of angry faces involves an additional late frontal positivity, likely reflecting higher cognitive demands imposed by forgetting angry faces.