Chapter 10 Flashcards
What is repression?
Popularized by Sigmund Freud through his psychoanalytic theory.
Refers to a psychological defence mechanism that banishes unwanted memories + feelings into the unconscious–>reduce conflict + psychic pain.
Repressed contents were not eliminated + could still influence behaviour unconsciously–> manifesting themselves in our dreams + preferences + emotional reactions
Not guaranteed to remain unconscious + could to pop up later occasions–>return of the repressed
Repression is an automatic, defensive process by which a memory is excluded from consciousness without one’s awareness (but Freud used the term interchangeably for both conscious or unconscious processes)
Suppression is an intentional, goal-directed exclusion of ideas or memories from awareness.
What is intentional forgetting? What is motivated forgetting?
Intentional forgetting refers to forgetting arising from processes initiated by a conscious goal to forget.
-Includes conscious strategies to forget (suppression + intentional context shifts)
Motivated forgetting encompasses the term psychogenic amnesia–> any forgetting that is psychological in origin + not attributed to neurological damage or dysfunction
- Used for cases of profound and surprising forgetting of major chunks of one’s life/event.
- Also includes more ordinary examples–>people forget unpleasant things in a way that would not call for clinical evaluation.
How does one control unwanted memories?
- Controlling unwanted memories may be accomplished by manipulating any stage of memory.
- The simplest way to avoid remembering unpleasant events is to limit encoding.
- If an unwanted experience gets encoded, you might avoid reminders to prevent retrieval.
- If reminders are inescapable, you might endeavour to stop retrieval.
- Mechanisms involved in “normal forgetting” are engaged in the service of your emotional goals.
Describe Bjork’s study of directed forgetting using the item-method:
directed forgetting is when the memory becomes impaired for recently experienced items that one is instructed to forget
This idea is often studied with the directed forgetting procedure–>participants are overtly instructed to forget recently encoded materials.
2 variants of the directed forgetting procedure: the item method + the list method.
item-method directed forgetting:
- A participant receives a series of items to remember, one at a time with instruction for continued remembering or forgetting
- Then given a test of all of the to-be-remembered and to-be-forgotten words.
- Recall for to-be-forgotten words is often substantially impaired, relative to to-be-remembered items regardless of whether the items presented were pictures, words, or words for which participants were asked to construct imagery + also occur on recognition tests
- This method reflects differential episodic encoding.
- The remember instruction triggers elaborate semantic encoding, whereas the forget instruction allows you to simply release attention from the word.
People exercise control over what they permit into memory–>by regulating whether a stimulus is granted elaborative processing.
Describe the mechanisms behind the differences in encoding quality across remember + forget items
Selective rehearsal hypothesis–> Better memory for remember items b/c they are likely to rehearse + elaborate the item more than something you tell them to forget
A forget instruction engages an active process that disrupts encoding.
Describe Fawcett’s study proving that there is a greater cognitive effort associated with forgetting than with remembering
Gave participants a secondary task to perform right after the remember/forget instruction.
After the memory instruction, an asterisk briefly appeared on the screen, and participants simply were asked to press a button as quickly as possible when they saw it.
Contrary to the selective rehearsal account, it took longer to press the button when it appeared after the forget instruction than after the remember instruction–> forget instruction required more attention.
Therefore, there is a greater cognitive effort associated with forgetting
encoding suppression process–>may involve similar neural processes as those involved in retrieval suppression
Describe Sedikides study on mnemic neglect effect:
People often can regulate which experiences they allow into memory by intentionally limiting encoding.
Gave participants a mock personality inventory that asked them to provide ratings on various personality questions–> program listed 32 behaviours that the participant was likely to exhibit. Some reflected well, whereas others were more negative.
Then tested on their memory for these behaviours following a short delay–> recalled significantly more of the positive than the negative behaviours.
Bias disappeared when told that the report was from another participant’s analysis.
Mnemic neglect effect–> people’s desire to view themselves favourably leads them to limit the encoding of negative feedback. Memory is regulated to protect their self-image
Describe the list-method of directed forgetting
The procedure presents the instruction to forget only after half of the list (often 10 to 20 items) has been studied + usually as a surprise.
Typically, deception is employed–> participants were told that the list they just studied was for “practice,” + the real list is about to be presented or pretend they’d received the wrong list, so they should “forget about it.”–> a second list is presented.
- A final test is then given, quite often for both lists, but sometimes only for the first list–> must remember as much as they can
- Performance in this forget group compared to the remember group told to continue remembering the first list.
1) When told to forget the first list, they do better in the recall of 2nd list on final test–> the proactive interference of the first list disappears when they believe that they can forget that list.
2) Forget instructions impair recall of items from the 1st list, compared to the remember group–> cost of a forget instruction.
Describe the classic example of directed forgetting by Geiselman & Bjork:
- Presenting a set of famous and nonfamous names
- to-be-forgotten (nonfamous) names were judged as more famous than were to-be-remembered (nonfamous) names in the remember condition.
- Participants had misattributed familiarity to fame b/c forgotten where they knew the name from, due to directed forgetting
Describe Joslyn’s study of how the accessibility of memories can be reduced if people don’t want to remember it
List-method directed forgetting illustrates Accessibility of memories can be intentionally reduced if people don’t want to remember it
- Asked students to record in a diary two unique events that happened to them each day over a 5-day period
- After the first week of recording, students turned in their diaries.
- The forget group: Forget events recorded on the first 5 days + only remember events from the second week
- The remember group: Must remember the events from the first + upcoming week
- Over the next 5-day period, the students then recorded a new set of events.
- Asked to remember all of the events they had recorded during both weeks.
- The forget group had poorer memory from the first week than did participants instructed to remember.
- Same pattern for “practice memories” recorded in their first week that neither group believed they would have to recall.
- Impairment was even found with negative + positive mood events
What are the two leading theories of list-method directed forgetting.
Retrieval inhibition hypothesis–>an instruction to forget the first list inhibits list-1 items, impairing recall. Memories remain available. Inhibition merely limits retrieval by reducing the activation of unwanted items.
-Explains why it’s hard to recall intentionally forgotten items but easy to recognize–>the re-presentation of forgotten items restores their activation levels.
The context shift hypothesis–> instructions to forget, mentally separate the to-be-forgotten items from the second list.
-Therefore, to-be-forgotten items are recalled more poorly because the new context is a poor retrieval cue for them–>unless reinstated during the final test.
Both item-method and list-method directed forgetting can impair neutral as well as emotionally negative materials.
How did Sahakyan & Kelley test the context shift hypothesis?
-Varied the mental context in between two lists of words.
-Shift condition: participants encoded the first list of words + then shifted their “frame of mind.”
by imagining for 1 minute, what their life would be like if they were invisible.
- this simple manipulation impaired people’s memory for the first list, even in the absence of any instruction to forget it.
-Implied that directed forgetting effect may arise from a shift in mental context induced by the intention to forget
How does the avoidance of cues facilitate normal forgetting?
To limit awareness of the memory, people avoid reminders.
1) First, by avoiding reminders, retrieval practice that strengthens and preserves memory is prevented
2) Second, by changing the physical environment, the mental context + mood context does not match the context in which the event took place, hindering retrieval.
What happens when we cannot avoid reminders for unpleasant events?
- Two choices: be reminded or stop retrieval.
- Unwanted memories have an “intrusive” quality, seeming to “leap” to awareness in response to reminders, despite our intention to avoid them.
- This reflexive quality seems similar to reflexive actions.
- Controlling retrieval builds upon these mechanisms of behavioural control to achieve cognitive control
Describe cognitive control
The ability to flexibly control thoughts in accordance with our goals, including our ability to stop unwanted thoughts from rising to consciousness.
