title: Single-trial evaluative conditioning can be moderated by instructed forgetting.
abstract: Evaluative conditioning (EC) is a change in the valence of a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to previous pairing with an affective unconditioned stimulus (US). Several previous studies indicate that EC is related to memory of the CS-US pairs. Previous studies, however, typically cannot distinguish between the influence of CS-US knowledge during measurement and during encoding. In addition, by measuring rather than manipulating memory, they do not test the causal effect of memory on EC. The present study employed a "directed forgetting" procedure to the EC paradigm instructing participants to either forget or remember certain CS-US pairs. We found that EC effects after single learning trials were stronger for to-be-remembered than for to-be-forgotten pairs. Manipulation checks showed that the forgetting manipulation also successfully modulated memory for the target pairs and reduced both retroactive and proactive interference on memory for other pairs. Item-based analyses further demonstrated that the size of EC depended on CS-US memory. The results suggest that EC relies on available memory during measurement of the EC effect.
authors.affiliation: University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany. anne.gast@uni-koeln.de.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gast
authors.affiliation: University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA. kattner@wisc.edu.
authors.forename: Florian
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Kattner
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D007858:Learning; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall
keywords: Contingency awareness; Contingency memory; Directed forgetting; Evaluative conditioning; Proactive interference; Retroactive interference