Patihis Lawrence, Place Patricia J
a Department of Psychology , University of Southern Mississippi , Hattiesburg , MS , USA.
b Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders, Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, University of California , Irvine , CA , USA.
Memory. 2018 May;26(5):619-633. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2017.1387666. Epub 2017 Oct 13.
Motivated forgetting is the idea that people can block out, or forget, upsetting or traumatic memories, because there is a motivation to do so. Some researchers have cited directed forgetting studies using trauma-related words as evidence for the theory of motivated forgetting of trauma. In the current article subjects used the list method directed forgetting paradigm with both trauma-related words and positive words. After one list of words was presented subjects were directed to forget the words previously learned, and they then received another list of words. Each list was a mix of positive and trauma-related words, and the lists were counterbalanced. Later, subjects recalled as many of the words as they could, including the ones they were told to forget. Based on the theory that motivated forgetting would lead to recall deficits of trauma-related material, we created eight hypotheses. High dissociators, trauma-exposed, sexual trauma-exposed, and high dissociators with trauma-exposure participants were hypothesised to show enhanced forgetting of trauma words. Results indicated only one of eight hypotheses was supported: those higher on dissociation and trauma recalled fewer trauma words in the to-be-forgotten condition, compared to those low on dissociation and trauma. These results provide weak support for differential motivated forgetting.
动机性遗忘是指人们能够排除或忘记令人不安或创伤性的记忆，因为有这样做的动机。一些研究人员引用了使用与创伤相关词汇的定向遗忘研究，作为创伤动机性遗忘理论的证据。在当前这篇文章中，研究对象使用了列表法定向遗忘范式，其中既有与创伤相关的词汇，也有积极词汇。在呈现一组词汇后，研究对象被要求忘记之前学过的词汇，然后他们会收到另一组词汇。每组词汇都是积极词汇和与创伤相关词汇的混合，且两组词汇相互平衡。之后，研究对象尽可能多地回忆词汇，包括那些他们被告知要忘记的词汇。基于动机性遗忘会导致与创伤相关材料回忆缺陷的理论，我们提出了八个假设。高解离者、经历过创伤者、经历过性创伤者以及经历过创伤的高解离者被假设会表现出对创伤词汇的遗忘增强。结果表明，八个假设中只有一个得到了支持：与低解离和低创伤者相比，在解离和创伤程度较高的情况下，那些人在需要忘记的条件下回忆起的创伤词汇更少。这些结果为差异性动机性遗忘提供了微弱的支持。
