Hupbach Almut
a Department of Psychology , Lehigh University , Bethlehem , PA , USA.
Memory. 2018 Mar;26(3):321-329. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2017.1358748. Epub 2017 Aug 2.
The intention to forget reduces the accessibility of information in memory, which is commonly explained with temporary retrieval difficulties. Long-term effects have rarely been studied, and results are inconsistent. The present study re-assessed the long-term effects of directed forgetting (DF). Participants encoded a first list of items (L1), and were then instructed to forget or to remember this list. Immediately afterwards, all participants were presented with a second list to remember. In Experiment 1, memory for L1 and L2 was assessed after a 24-h delay. The forget cue reduced the number of items that were recalled from L1. Experiment 2 implemented a 12-h delay between encoding and test that was either filled with day-time wakefulness or night-time sleep. Replicating the findings of Exp. 1, recall of L1 was reduced in the forget in comparison to the remember condition. Sleep in comparison to wakefulness significantly strengthened L1 memory in the remember group only. Taken together, the present study shows that the intention to forget can have long-lasting consequences. This suggests that different mechanisms underlie the short- and long-term effects of DF, with long-term effects potentially reflecting the preferential consolidation of information that has been identified as important during encoding.
遗忘意图会降低记忆中信息的可及性，通常用临时检索困难来解释这一现象。长期影响很少被研究，且结果并不一致。本研究重新评估了定向遗忘（DF）的长期影响。参与者对第一批项目列表（L1）进行编码，然后被指示忘记或记住该列表。之后，立即向所有参与者呈现第二批列表以供记忆。在实验1中，在延迟24小时后评估对L1和L2的记忆。遗忘提示减少了从L1中回忆出的项目数量。实验2在编码和测试之间设置了12小时的延迟，延迟期间要么是白天清醒状态，要么是夜间睡眠状态。重复实验1的结果，与记忆条件相比，遗忘条件下对L1的回忆减少。与清醒状态相比，睡眠仅在记忆组中显著增强了L1记忆。综合来看，本研究表明遗忘意图可能会产生持久的后果。这表明DF的短期和长期影响背后存在不同的机制，长期影响可能反映了在编码过程中被确定为重要的信息的优先巩固。
