Active Forgetting

Question 1

What is repression?

Answer 1

“An active mechanism to prevent remembering”
Based on Freud’s ideas: Memories injurious to the ego are suppressed to avoid anxiety

Question 2

outline the Experimental test by Wilkinson & Cargill (1955) on repression

Answer 2

• Participants told they are doing a personality study.
• Listen to story containing a dream description
• Dream is either neutral, or contains fairly obvious sexual imagery with an oedipal content.

Result: Men have worse memory than women for the oedipal material

Question 3

what is the experimental evidence of general repression through arousal Levinger & Clark (1961)

Answer 3

• Free association task with neutral (e.g. CARROT) or emotional stimulus words (e.g. ANGRY)
• Galvanic Skin Responses (GSRs - a.k.a. EDRs or SCRs) recorded to assess physiological arousal
• Free associates to neutral words recalled better than those to emotional words

Question 4

what are the criticisms of Levinger & Clark (1961) experimental evidence on general repression through arousal

Answer 4

• It is a test of memory for associates – not memory for the stimuli themselves. Memory for stimulus words generally is better if they are arousing (e.g. Rubin, 1986).
• uses an immediate memory test - if Freudian repression existed to emotional events it should show long delays

Question 5

Outline Parkin, Lewinsohn & Folkard (1982) study on enhancement of LTM with Arousal

Answer 5

• Replicate Levinger & Clark with delay added
• At immediate testing memory for associates to emotional words is poorer
• After 7 days, memory for associates to emotional words is better than for neutral ones.

Question 6

what is the Action-Decrement theory? (walker, 1958)

Answer 6

Memory traces take time to consolidate – physiological arousal increases the time for the trace to consolidate, but may improve longer-term encoding.

Question 7

what is retrograde Arousal Enhancement?

Answer 7

the emotional arousal at the stage of memory consolidation enhances the feeling of remembering.

Question 8

what was Anderson, Wais & Gabrieli (2006) study on Retrograde Arousal Enhancement?

Answer 8

• Neutral Picture, Inter Stimulus Interval of 4 or 9 seconds, Arousing Picture
• Recognition Memory Tests for both Neutral and Arousing after 1 week
  Results:
• Memory for Arousing Stimuli is Enhanced – as predicted e.g.Rubin, 1986
• Memory for Neutral Stimuli shortly before Arousing ones is Enhanced
• Enhancement is for Remembering rather that Knowing

Question 9

What did Finn and Roediger (2011) find about forgetting?

Answer 9

• Vocabulary learning is enhanced by negative arousing pictures immediately after or 2 secs after successful retrieval.
• But arousal does not enhance performance while restudying items

Question 10

what is part-listing cueing, Slamecka (1968)?

Answer 10

Encode 3 word lists.
30 rare words.
30 common words.
30 butterfly associates.

Recall with context -
(15 words provided)
Or in control condition
(no words provided)

Part-list impairs memory.

Question 11

how did Anderson, Bjork & Bjork (1994) test retrieval induced forgetting?

Answer 11

• Encode Category-Exemplar pairs.
• Practice Retrieval of Half the pairs.
  At final test cued recall is:
• At baseline for unpracticed categories =
• Enhanced for practiced exemplars of practiced categories ✓
• But impaired for unpracticed exemplars of practiced categories❌

Question 12

Outline Bjork (1970), Johnson (1994), Anderson (2005) study on directed forgetting

Answer 12

List-method Directed forgetting:
control group
- learn one list of words (List 1C)
-Learn second list (List 2C)
- Recall Al list 1C and 2C
Experimental group
- Learn one list of words (1E)
- SURPRISE INSTRUCTION TO FORGET
- Learn second list (list 2E)
- Recall All list 1E and 2E

findings:
Recall for 2E > 1E, but also, 1E < 1C, and 2E > 2C

Question 13

what is item-method directed forgetting:

Answer 13

Peach - REMEMBER, Apple - FORGET, Cake - FORGET, Horse - FORGET, Blue - REMEMBER, Carrot - REMEMBER

REMEMBER items enhanced relative to FORGET items

Question 14

Explanation of item-method directed forgetting

Answer 14

• This yields substantial REMEMBER - FORGET differences that can be observed in both Recall and Recognition
• Generally interpreted in terms of selective rehearsal of TBR items - i.e. an encoding effect rather than inhibition of items in storage

Question 15

Explanation of Item-Method Directed Forgetting

Answer 15

• This generally yields large recall deficits for TBF lists relative to TBR or control lists (often not observed in recognition tests).
• Generally interpreted in terms of Retrieval Inhibition.
  Items remain in memory (see intact recognition) but are actively inhibited from being recalled.
• But note appropriate control lists and issues of output order control (Anderson, 2005).

Question 16

Direct Suppression: Think/No-Think, Anderson & Green (2001)

Answer 16

• Learn 40 word pairs (e.g. ORDEAL - ROACH)
• Then 0 to 16 practice trials.
• Either THINK - When you see ORDEAL, say ROACH
• Or NO-THINK - Fixate the cue word (ORDEAL) for 4 seconds but attempt to prevent ROACH from coming to mind.
  Cued Recall Test
• ORDEAL - ?
• Performance improves with repetitions of THINK trials.
• But declines with repetitions of NO-THINK trials.

Question 17

What are the 3 possible causes of Suppression Mechanisms?

Answer 17

1. Generation of Alternative Associations
2. Inhibition of Cue- Target Connection
3. Direct Inhibition of Target

Question 18

Practical Implications of Inhibition

Answer 18

• Success in inhibition appears to be correlated with active engagement of prefrontal cortex in suppressing hippocampal activation (Anderson & Levy, 2009)
• Individual differences in ability may explain variations in recovery from trauma.
• inhibition paradigms can be extended to memories for real events - e.g. actions (Sahakyan & Foster, 2009), autobiographical memories (Barnier et al., 2007).
• Active suppression through NO-THINK or Directed Forgetting could potentially explain loss of memories from Childhood Sexual Abuse (e.g. Gordon & Connolly, 2010).

Question 19

is there evidence for Freudian repression?

Answer 19

• No Automatic suppression of emotional material - No automatic repression
• Emotional items generally well remembered
• Even neutral items associated with arousal are generally well remembered

Question 20

what is Practical Active Repression?

Answer 20

Thinking about stuff repeatedly will almost certainly make it more likely to be remembered, and actively not thinking about stuff may actually inhibit retrieval from storage