Department of Psychology, University of Hull, Hull, UK.
Memory. 2012;20(7):758-70. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2012.702774. Epub 2012 Aug 6.
In list-method directed forgetting, people's ability to forget one of the sets of learned material is examined. Research shows that memory for to-be-forgotten items is impaired when assessed by a recall test and by recognition tests reliant on recollective processes. Retrieval inhibition and context-change mechanisms have been proposed to account for the directed forgetting effects and both of them account for the results obtained with recognition tests. However, the context change account makes a specific prediction that recollection is impaired by directed forgetting only if it makes use of contextual associations. In the present study, directed forgetting was examined with two types of recollection-based tasks making use of different types of associations, namely a list discrimination task utilising contextual associations and an associative recognition task utilising interitem associations. Consistent with the context change account, the costs of directed forgetting were observed in a list discrimination task and were not observed in an associative recognition task. The results indicate that impairment in recollection due to directed forgetting is not general and provide converging evidence to support the context-change account.
在列表法定向遗忘中，人们的遗忘一组已学材料的能力会被检验。研究表明，当通过回忆测试和依赖于再认过程的识别测试来评估时，对要遗忘的项目的记忆会受到损害。检索抑制和上下文变化机制被提出来解释定向遗忘效应，它们都解释了识别测试的结果。然而，上下文变化的解释有一个具体的预测，即只有在定向遗忘利用上下文关联时，再认才会受到损害。在本研究中，使用两种利用不同类型关联的基于再认的任务来检验定向遗忘，即利用上下文关联的列表辨别任务和利用项目间关联的联想识别任务。与上下文变化的解释一致，在列表辨别任务中观察到了定向遗忘的代价，而在联想识别任务中则没有观察到。结果表明，由于定向遗忘导致的再认损伤不是普遍的，这为支持上下文变化的解释提供了一致的证据。
