Chapter 10 Motivated Forgetting Flashcards
Positivity bias
People show a strong positivity bias for memory
OA recalled fewer pictures than YA
Pictures with emotional content recalled better
Negative events not recalled as well in OA
Repression/suppression
Unconscious/conscious
Psychogenic amnesia
Motivated forgetting
Any forgetting psychological in origin
Not attributed to neuro damage or dysfunction
Profound and surprising episodes of forgetting the events of one’s life, arising from psycho factors
Directed forgetting
The tendency for an instruction to forget recently experienced items to induce memory impairment for those items
Item-method directed forgetting
Ppt receives series of items to remember then remember/forget it
Forgotten words recall impaired relative to remembered
Item-method encoding reflects differential episodic encoding - you would refrain from elaborate rehearsal until you knew whether it was to be remembered or to be forgotten
Remember instruction would trigger semantic encoding - forget instruction would give permission to release attn from word
People exert more cognitive effort after forget than remember instruction
Fawcett: ppts slower to perform secondary task when it appeared after forget instruction
Raises possibility of active forgetting process
Sedikides
Mock personality inventory
People remembered positive behaviours spit out by analysis
When people told the behaviours in the report from another participant’s analysis, people showed no bias
Mnemic neglect effect
People’s desire to view themselves favourably leads them to limit the encoding of negative feedback
List-method directed forgetting procedure
Presents instructions to forget after half the list has been studied, and as surprise
Second list presented
Test for first list
Ppts asked to disregard the earlier instruction to forget and remember as much as they can
Performance in forget group contrasted with remember group
When ppts believe they can forget the first list, they often do better at recalling 2nd list on final test compared to remember group
Proactive interference found from 1st list disappears when ppl believe they can forget that list, providing clear benefit of instruction to forget
Also, forget instructions impair ppl’s recall of items from 1st list, compared to performance in remember condition, reflecting cost of forget instruction
Unlikely ppts use shallow encoding to forget 1st-list items
List-method directed forgetting effects usually disappear when recog tested
Unlike item-method, items in list method reveals presence on implicit memory tests
Unlike item-method, items in list method reveal their presence on implicit memory tests
To-be-forgotten items can sometimes exert a greater influence on behavior when memory is tested implicitly
Bjork
Implicit memory testing on list method
To be forgotten non-famous names were judged as more famous than were to-be remembered nonfamous names in the remember condition
Participants forgot where they knew name from and misattributed familiarity to fame
Ppl can intentionally reduce accessibility when they no longer wish to remember
Impairment found with both neg and pos events
2 leading theories of list-method directed forgetting
Retrieval inhibition hypothesis:
Instruction to forget the 1st list inhibits list-1 items, impairing recall but not permanently - can be recognized if not recalled, when re-presented
Context shift hypothesis:
Instructions to forget mentally separate to-be-forgotten items from 2nd list
If mental context changes between list 1 and 2 and 2nd context remains active during final test, to-be-forgotten items should be recalled more poorly because new context is poor retrieval cue for them
Sahakyan
Context shift hypothesis
Ppts encoded list of words, then shifted frame of mind, then study second list
Ppts poorly retained 1st list
Compatible with retrieval inhibition hypothesis
Occur when too late to minimize encoding
Preventing reactivation encourages decay
Cognitive control
Think/no think paradigm
Ppts study pairs
Then recall second word whenever encounter first word as reminder
But avoid retrieval when 1st word in red by willing it from entering consciousness
To measure success, ppts receive studied cues on test and are asked to recall target memory word
Positive control effect = enhanced memory for think items above baseline recall
Negative control effect = memory deficit for no-think items below baseline recall
When people avoid reminders, presenting cues triggers inhibitory processes that impair memory, aka suppression-induced forgetting
Suppression-induced forgetting
Amt of forgetting increases with frequency of suppression
Adults with attn deficit disorder show diminished suppression-induced forgetting compared to control participants
ADD show diminished suppression-induced forgetting
Neuro and retrieval suppression
More activation found in motor stopping regions during no-think: R lateral PFC, anterior cingulate cortex
Stopping unwanted actions and memories engages common inhibition process
Anderson: reduced hippo activity when participants suppress retrieval - brakes
Direct suppression vs though substitution
Using think/no-think procedure
Direct suppression group asked to look at reminder and prevent memory from arising, slamming on brakes
Thought substitution group told to avoid retrieval by retrieving alt association to reminder as way to redirect minds away from unwanted memory
Similar amts of forgetting for no-thinks for both groups
Suppression used R lat PFC to lower hippo
Substitution used L PFC to raise hippo
Psychogenic amnesia
Triggered by stressors
Situation specific or not
Fugue state lasts hours/days
Amnesiacs couldn’t remember any faces learned during time affected by amnesia - but stronger activation in R lateral PFC and wearer hippocampus
Suggest extreme distress may lead retrieval suppression to be engaged involuntarily in reaction to certain stimuli
Pavlov extinguishing
When a classically conditioned salivary response was extinguished, response gained strength again after 20min
Not to full strength
Recovers less each time
Spontaneous recovery
Whenever response is retrieved by accident, association between cue and mistaken response punished via extinction
Underwood:
Found significant retro interference at short delays, but performance on first list improved at longer delays
Memorized 3 lists, 1st suffered from retroactive interference on recall test but after 30 mins recall improves
Stronger memories exhibit better recovery
Why does episodic memory improve over time?
Spontaneous recovery
Need to stop unwanted responses that had previously been relevant
The need to stop unwanted responses is one of the main conditions thought to engage inhibition
If retroactive interference reflects persisting effects of inhibition, perhaps forgotten items recover because inhibition is gradually released
Repeated retrieval attempts
Useful
Reminiscence
Because the benefits of recalling new lines were countered by students’ failures to recall lines previously recalled
Hypermnesia
When overall recall improves through repeated testing
Erdelyi reversed Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve
Ppts who studied words had edge over pictures
Largest on free-recall tests, also on cued-recall and recognition tests
Increases with increasing numbers of recall tests
OJ Simpson tv
Henkel: showed slides of drawings with names or just names
Other Ppts tested over 3 increased hypermnesia but also showed source misattribution errors
Cue reinstatement
Smith
Very often one may need to confront reminders of unpleasant experiences on a recurring basis
Ppts asked to recall category names 3 times while 3 categories left out of 2nd time
Recall of avoided categories 70% lower than control
Once they were given the category names, they came back
Goernert:
Cues recover memories intentionally forgotten
Presenting a subset of items released directed forgetting
Seeing the item itself would be an effective cue (videotape)
Reinstating context
Star Wars theme played helped ppl remember
Motivated forgetting processes reduces accessibility but not availability
Repressed memories
Memories recovered spontaneously may be more likely to be genuine
May have been forgotten by any method in chapter
Memories recovered through suggestive therapy never corroborated
Memories recovered spontaneously corroborated on par with continuously accessible memories
People may have a recovered memory experience because they forget having remembered the event before
