Active Forgetting Flashcards
What is repression?
“An active mechanism to prevent remembering”
Based on Freud’s ideas: Memories injurious to the ego are suppressed to avoid anxiety
outline the Experimental test by Wilkinson & Cargill (1955) on repression
- Participants told they are doing a personality study.
- Listen to story containing a dream description
- Dream is either neutral, or contains fairly obvious sexual imagery with an oedipal content.
Result: Men have worse memory than women for the oedipal material
what is the experimental evidence of general repression through arousal Levinger & Clark (1961)
- Free association task with neutral (e.g. CARROT) or emotional stimulus words (e.g. ANGRY)
- Galvanic Skin Responses (GSRs - a.k.a. EDRs or SCRs) recorded to assess physiological arousal
- Free associates to neutral words recalled better than those to emotional words
what are the criticisms of Levinger & Clark (1961) experimental evidence on general repression through arousal
- It is a test of memory for associates – not memory for the stimuli themselves. Memory for stimulus words generally is better if they are arousing (e.g. Rubin, 1986).
- uses an immediate memory test - if Freudian repression existed to emotional events it should show long delays
Outline Parkin, Lewinsohn & Folkard (1982) study on enhancement of LTM with Arousal
- Replicate Levinger & Clark with delay added
- At immediate testing memory for associates to emotional words is poorer
- After 7 days, memory for associates to emotional words is better than for neutral ones.
what is the Action-Decrement theory? (walker, 1958)
Memory traces take time to consolidate – physiological arousal increases the time for the trace to consolidate, but may improve longer-term encoding.
what is retrograde Arousal Enhancement?
the emotional arousal at the stage of memory consolidation enhances the feeling of remembering.
what was Anderson, Wais & Gabrieli (2006) study on Retrograde Arousal Enhancement?
- Neutral Picture, Inter Stimulus Interval of 4 or 9 seconds, Arousing Picture
- Recognition Memory Tests for both Neutral and Arousing after 1 week
Results: - Memory for Arousing Stimuli is Enhanced – as predicted e.g.Rubin, 1986
- Memory for Neutral Stimuli shortly before Arousing ones is Enhanced
- Enhancement is for Remembering rather that Knowing
What did Finn and Roediger (2011) find about forgetting?
- Vocabulary learning is enhanced by negative arousing pictures immediately after or 2 secs after successful retrieval.
- But arousal does not enhance performance while restudying items
what is part-listing cueing, Slamecka (1968)?
Encode 3 word lists.
30 rare words.
30 common words.
30 butterfly associates.
Recall with context -
(15 words provided)
Or in control condition
(no words provided)
Part-list impairs memory.
how did Anderson, Bjork & Bjork (1994) test retrieval induced forgetting?
- Encode Category-Exemplar pairs.
- Practice Retrieval of Half the pairs.
At final test cued recall is: - At baseline for unpracticed categories =
- Enhanced for practiced exemplars of practiced categories ✓
- But impaired for unpracticed exemplars of practiced categories❌
Outline Bjork (1970), Johnson (1994), Anderson (2005) study on directed forgetting
List-method Directed forgetting:
control group
- learn one list of words (List 1C)
-Learn second list (List 2C)
- Recall Al list 1C and 2C
Experimental group
- Learn one list of words (1E)
- SURPRISE INSTRUCTION TO FORGET
- Learn second list (list 2E)
- Recall All list 1E and 2E
findings:
Recall for 2E > 1E, but also, 1E < 1C, and 2E > 2C
what is item-method directed forgetting:
Peach - REMEMBER, Apple - FORGET, Cake - FORGET, Horse - FORGET, Blue - REMEMBER, Carrot - REMEMBER
REMEMBER items enhanced relative to FORGET items
Explanation of item-method directed forgetting
- This yields substantial REMEMBER - FORGET differences that can be observed in both Recall and Recognition
- Generally interpreted in terms of selective rehearsal of TBR items - i.e. an encoding effect rather than inhibition of items in storage
Explanation of Item-Method Directed Forgetting
- This generally yields large recall deficits for TBF lists relative to TBR or control lists (often not observed in recognition tests).
- Generally interpreted in terms of Retrieval Inhibition.
Items remain in memory (see intact recognition) but are actively inhibited from being recalled. - But note appropriate control lists and issues of output order control (Anderson, 2005).
Direct Suppression: Think/No-Think, Anderson & Green (2001)
- Learn 40 word pairs (e.g. ORDEAL - ROACH)
- Then 0 to 16 practice trials.
- Either THINK - When you see ORDEAL, say ROACH
- Or NO-THINK - Fixate the cue word (ORDEAL) for 4 seconds but attempt to prevent ROACH from coming to mind.
Cued Recall Test - ORDEAL - ?
- Performance improves with repetitions of THINK trials.
- But declines with repetitions of NO-THINK trials.
What are the 3 possible causes of Suppression Mechanisms?
- Generation of Alternative Associations
- Inhibition of Cue- Target Connection
- Direct Inhibition of Target
Practical Implications of Inhibition
- Success in inhibition appears to be correlated with active engagement of prefrontal cortex in suppressing hippocampal activation (Anderson & Levy, 2009)
- Individual differences in ability may explain variations in recovery from trauma.
- inhibition paradigms can be extended to memories for real events - e.g. actions (Sahakyan & Foster, 2009), autobiographical memories (Barnier et al., 2007).
- Active suppression through NO-THINK or Directed Forgetting could potentially explain loss of memories from Childhood Sexual Abuse (e.g. Gordon & Connolly, 2010).
is there evidence for Freudian repression?
- No Automatic suppression of emotional material - No automatic repression
- Emotional items generally well remembered
- Even neutral items associated with arousal are generally well remembered
what is Practical Active Repression?
Thinking about stuff repeatedly will almost certainly make it more likely to be remembered, and actively not thinking about stuff may actually inhibit retrieval from storage
