Koppel Rebecca H, Storm Benjamin C
a Department of Psychology , University of Illinois at Chicago , IL , USA.
Memory. 2014;22(4):340-8. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2013.789914. Epub 2013 Apr 22.
The inhibition underlying retrieval-induced forgetting has been argued to play a crucial role in the ability to overcome interference in memory and cognition. Supporting this conjecture, recent research has found that participants who exhibit greater levels of retrieval-induced forgetting are better at overcoming fixation on the Remote Associates Test (RAT) than are participants who exhibit reduced levels of retrieval-induced forgetting. If the ability to inhibit inappropriate responses improves the ability to solve fixated RAT problems, then reducing the fixation caused by inappropriate responses should reduce the correlation between retrieval-induced forgetting and problem solving. We tested this hypothesis by inserting an incubation period between two 30-second problem-solving attempts: half of the participants were given an incubation period (distributed condition), half were not (continuous condition). In the continuous condition retrieval-induced forgetting correlated positively with problem-solving performance during both the initial and final 30 seconds of problem solving. In the distributed condition retrieval-induced forgetting only correlated with problem-solving performance during the first 30 seconds of problem solving. This finding suggests that incubation reduces the need for inhibition by reducing the extent to which problem solvers suffer fixation.
检索诱导遗忘背后的抑制作用被认为在克服记忆和认知中的干扰能力方面起着关键作用。支持这一推测的是，最近的研究发现，与检索诱导遗忘水平较低的参与者相比，表现出较高水平检索诱导遗忘的参与者在远程联想测验（RAT）中更善于克服思维定式。如果抑制不适当反应的能力能提高解决固定RAT问题的能力，那么减少由不适当反应引起的思维定式应该会降低检索诱导遗忘与问题解决之间的相关性。我们通过在两次30秒的问题解决尝试之间插入一个酝酿期来检验这一假设：一半的参与者有一个酝酿期（分散条件），一半没有（连续条件）。在连续条件下，检索诱导遗忘在问题解决的初始和最后30秒与问题解决表现呈正相关。在分散条件下，检索诱导遗忘仅在问题解决的前30秒与问题解决表现相关。这一发现表明，酝酿通过减少问题解决者受思维定式影响的程度来降低对抑制的需求。
