Zwissler Bastian, Schindler Sebastian, Fischer Helena, Plewnia Christian, Kissler Johanna M
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Neurophysiology and Interventional Neuropsychiatry, University Hospital Tübingen - University of Tübingen Tübingen, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany ; Center of Excellence Cognitive Interaction Technology, University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2015 Nov 16;6:1741. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01741. eCollection 2015.
Humans need to be able to selectively control their memories. This capability is often investigated in directed forgetting (DF) paradigms. In item-method DF, individual items are presented and each is followed by either a forget- or remember-instruction. On a surprise test of all items, memory is then worse for to-be-forgotten items (TBF) compared to to-be-remembered items (TBR). This is thought to result mainly from selective rehearsal of TBR, although inhibitory mechanisms also appear to be recruited by this paradigm. Here, we investigate whether the mnemonic consequences of a forget instruction differ from the ones of incidental encoding, where items are presented without a specific memory instruction. Four experiments were conducted where un-cued items (UI) were interspersed and recognition performance was compared between TBR, TBF, and UI stimuli. Accuracy was encouraged via a performance-dependent monetary bonus. Experiments varied the number of items and their presentation speed and used either letter-cues or symbolic cues. Across all experiments, including perceptually fully counterbalanced variants, memory accuracy for TBF was reduced compared to TBR, but better than for UI. Moreover, participants made consistently fewer false alarms and used a very conservative response criterion when responding to TBF stimuli. Thus, the F-cue results in active processing and reduces false alarm rate, but this does not impair recognition memory beyond an un-cued baseline condition, where only incidental encoding occurs. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
人类需要能够选择性地控制自己的记忆。这种能力通常在定向遗忘（DF）范式中进行研究。在项目法定向遗忘中，逐个呈现单个项目，每个项目之后要么是遗忘指令，要么是记住指令。在对所有项目的意外测试中，与要记住的项目（TBR）相比，对要遗忘的项目（TBF）的记忆更差。这被认为主要是由于对TBR的选择性复述，尽管抑制机制似乎也被该范式所采用。在这里，我们研究遗忘指令的记忆后果是否与偶然编码的记忆后果不同，在偶然编码中，项目在没有特定记忆指令的情况下呈现。进行了四项实验，将无提示项目（UI）穿插其中，并比较了TBR、TBF和UI刺激之间的识别性能。通过与表现挂钩的金钱奖励来鼓励提高准确性。实验改变了项目数量及其呈现速度，并使用了字母提示或符号提示。在所有实验中，包括在感知上完全平衡的变体中，与TBR相比，TBF的记忆准确性降低，但比UI的记忆准确性要好。此外，参与者在对TBF刺激做出反应时，错误警报始终较少，并且使用了非常保守的反应标准。因此，F提示会导致主动加工并降低错误警报率，但这不会损害超出无提示基线条件的识别记忆，在无提示基线条件下仅发生偶然编码。讨论了这些发现的理论意义。
