Event-method directed forgetting: forgetting a video segment is more effortful than remembering it.
Videos were presented depicting events such as baking cookies or cleaning a fish tank. Periodically, the video paused and an instruction to Remember (R) or Forget (F) the preceding video segment was presented; the video then resumed. Participants later responded more accurately to cued-recall questions (E1) and to true/false statements (E2-5) regarding R segments than F segments. This difference was larger for specific information (the woman added 3 cups of flour) than for general information (the woman added flour). Participants were also slower to detect visual probes presented following F instructions compared to those presented following R instructions. These findings suggest that intentional forgetting is an effortful process that can be performed even on segments of otherwise continuous events and that the result is a relatively impoverished representation of the unwanted information in memory.
Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Electronic address: jmfawcet@dal.ca.
Jonathan M
JM
Fawcett
Tracy L
TL
Taylor
Lynn
L
Nadel
D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D011930:Reaction Time; D014743:Videotape Recording; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult
2300 Human Experimental Psychology; 2340 Cognitive Processes; 2343 Learning & Memory; Cognition; Events; Intentional forgetting; Memory