Direct and indirect measures of intentional forgetting in children and adults: evidence for retrieval inhibition and reinstatement.
In two experiments children in grades 3 and 4 and college students were given an item-by-item cued intentional forgetting task (i.e., instructions were to remember some words and to forget others), either a direct (cued recall word-stem completion) or an indirect (repetition priming word-stem completion) test of memory for the words, and a final free recall test for both remember- and forget-cued words. In both age groups, direct and indirect assessments produced better memory for remember- than for forget-cued words, even in Experiment 2 where the opportunity to selectively rehearse had been reduced by having subjects count aloud with each cue. These results suggest that retrieval inhibition plays a role in item-cued intentional forgetting, albeit one that is similar across ages. Furthermore, again in both age groups, performance on the word-stem completion tasks was enhanced in comparison with an immediate free-recall group, but only for material thought to be irrelevant (the forget-cued words). The facilitation on the priming tasks, however, did not carry over to a final free-recall task. These results on the effects of an intervening experience are discussed in terms of their implications for children's eyewitness testimony.
Lehman
E B
EB
George Mason University, USA.
McKinley-Pace
M J
MJ
Wilson
J A
JA
Slavsky
M D
MD
Woodson
M E
ME
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D011897:Random Allocation; D013060:Speech