title: Positive forgetting of sentence material.
abstract: This experiment investigated the positive-forgetting phenomenon with sentence material. Sets of sentences were presented to Ss with each sentence being cued "remember" or "forget" immediately following its presentation. To-be-remembered (TBR) sentences were found to be more accessible thanto-be-forgotten (TBF) sentences and uncued control sentences. Sentence connectedness was found to be an important determiner of the magnitude of the observed recall phenomenon; but differential sentence interest was not a significant factor. Using a multiple-choice recognition test, key words or phrases from the to-be-forgotten sentences were found to be equally available as key words or phrases from the to-be-remembered sentences. These results warrant an extention of Bjork's (1970, 1972) selective-rehearsal and differential-grouping interpretation of the positive-forgetting phenomenon to encompass sentence material. Some implications of the findings for single-presentation information acquisition were noted.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Ohio University, 45701, Athens, Ohio.
authors.forename: R E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Geiselman