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).
