title: Selection for encoding: No evidence of greater attentional capture following forget than remember instructions.
abstract: We measured attentional orienting in an item-method-directed forgetting task. Words appeared singly, followed by an instruction to remember or forget. In Experiment 1, study words appeared at center; in Experiments 2 and 3, they appeared to the left and right. In all three experiments, there was a delay of 50 ms or 250 ms, after which a cue appeared to the left or right of fixation. This was followed at a fixed 100-ms stimulus onset asynchrony by a target in the cued or uncued location. Attentional capture was measured by evaluating the speed to localize (Experiments 1 and 2) or discriminate (Experiment 3) targets in cued versus uncued locations. A subsequent yes-no recognition test confirmed a directed forgetting effect. Even though attention is purported to withdraw more readily after forget instructions than after remember instructions, we obtained no evidence for the corollary: Attention is not more readily captured by events that follow forget instructions. A forget instruction must therefore impact attention only insofar as withdrawal is needed to instantiate the intention to forget, without instigating a longer lasting distractibility.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie University, 15000, 1355 Oxford Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4R2, Canada. ttaylor2@Dal.ca.
authors.forename: Tracy L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Taylor
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Jeff P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Hamm
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D006801:Humans; D033182:Intention; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation; D013997:Time Factors
keywords: Attention; Attention and memory; Attention: Interactions with memory; Directed forgetting; Intentional forgetting