title: Cue-independent forgetting by intentional suppression - Evidence for inhibition as the mechanism of intentional forgetting.
abstract: People are able to intentionally forget unwanted memories through voluntary suppression, as revealed by the Think/No-think (TNT) paradigm. However, the nature of intentional forgetting is controversial. Findings that forgetting is independent of retrieval cues suggest that inhibitory control underlies intentional forgetting, but this result is also in line with an interference account. To resolve this controversy, we have directly contrasted the cue-independent characteristic of suppression versus interference. A double-cue paradigm was used, in which two different cues were associated with the same target during initial memory formation. Only one cue-target association received further interference/suppression training. In the test phase, when both cues were used to retrieve the target, we found that interference caused memory impairment that was restricted to the trained cue-target association, while suppression induced forgetting that generalized to the independent cue-target association. Therefore, the effect of suppression differs from that of interference. The cue-independent forgetting by voluntary suppression indicates that the target memory itself is inhibited, providing evidence that the underlying mechanism of suppression-induced forgetting is inhibitory control.
authors.affiliation: Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China. Electronic address: yyingwang@pku.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yingying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, China. Electronic address: choudicky1@163.com.
authors.forename: Zhijun
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University, Beijing, China. Electronic address: zhuzijian@pku.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Zijian
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Software Engineering Institute, Peking University, Beijing, China. Electronic address: caihuaqian@pku.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Huaqian
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, and the Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, China. Electronic address: wuyh@pku.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yanhong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Independent-cue technique; Inhibition; Intentional forgetting; Interference; Memory retrieval