Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo ON, N2L 3C5 Canada.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2013 May;39(3):691-9. doi: 10.1037/a0029523. Epub 2012 Jul 30.
The effects of the duration of remember and forget cues were examined to test the differential rehearsal account of item-based directed forgetting. In Experiments 1 and 2, cues were shown for 300, 600, or 900 ms, and a directed forgetting effect (better recognition of remember than forget items) was found at each duration. In addition, recognition of both remember and forget items increased with cue duration. These 2 effects did not interact. The results of Experiment 2 further showed that memory for the cue associated with the study items increased with cue duration as well. The results of Experiment 1 were replicated in Experiment 3 for cue durations of 1, 2, and 3 s. Finally, a similar pattern of results was found for cue durations of 2, 4, and 6 s for associative recognition of random word pairs. If subjects cannot immediately terminate the processing of forget items, the lingering processing of these items is as beneficial as the continued processing of remember items. Alternatively, subjects may use inefficient or counterproductive strategies that ironically improve memory for the information they wish to forget.
为了检验基于项目的定向遗忘的差异复述理论，考察了记住和忘记线索持续时间的影响。在实验 1 和实验 2 中，线索呈现 300、600 或 900 毫秒，在每个持续时间都发现了定向遗忘效应（记住项目的识别比忘记项目好）。此外，记住和忘记项目的识别都随线索持续时间的增加而增加。这两个效应没有相互作用。实验 2 的结果进一步表明，与学习项目相关的线索记忆也随线索持续时间的增加而增加。实验 1 的结果在实验 3 中被复制，线索持续时间为 1、2 和 3 秒。最后，在随机单词对的联想识别中，对于 2、4 和 6 秒的线索持续时间，也发现了类似的结果模式。如果被试不能立即终止对忘记项目的处理，那么这些项目的持续处理就像对记住项目的持续处理一样有益。或者，被试可能会使用低效或适得其反的策略，这些策略讽刺地提高了他们希望忘记的信息的记忆。
