title: Direct and indirect measures of intentional forgetting in children and adults: evidence for retrieval inhibition and reinstatement.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: George Mason University, USA.
authors.forename: E B
authors.initials: EB
authors.lastname: Lehman
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: McKinley-Pace
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.forename: M D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Slavsky
authors.forename: M E
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Woodson
mesh_terms: 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