Song Xiaolei, Hu Xiaofei, Yi Feng, Dong Meimei
School of Psychology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China.
Key Laboratory for Behavior and Cognitive Neuroscience of Shaanxi Province, Xi'an, China.
Heliyon. 2023 Jun 1;9(6):e16896. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e16896. eCollection 2023 Jun.
It is crucial to remember or forget others' faces in daily life. People can intentionally forget things they wish to forget, a phenomenon called directed forgetting (DF). This study examined the effects of stimuli's emotions and sex differences in participants and stimuli on DF. We used happy and angry faces as the items in a typical item-method paradigm and conducted three behavioral experiments. In Experiment 1, we recruited 60 participants to examine how emotions of stimuli and sex differences in participants and stimuli affected DF. In Experiment 2, we recruited 60 female participants and manipulated the durations of items presented during the study phase to examine whether the selective rehearsal theory was held. In Experiment 3, we recruited 50 female participants and attached recognition cues to the items presented during the test phase to examine whether the inhibitory control theory was held. We treated the sex of participants in Experiment 1, the durations of items presented during the study phase in Experiment 2 as the between-subject factors, and emotion and sex of stimuli as the with-subject factors. We conducted the mixed-design ANOVA for corrected hit rate, sensitivity, and bias based on the signal detection theory. As a result, we found that DF occurred easily for male participants, whereas not for female participants because of females' superior memorial performances and stronger sensitivities. Furthermore, we found that female participants owned the best and worst recognition rates for angry female faces and happy male faces, respectively. Our results supported the selective rehearsal theory, suggesting manipulations during the study phase had the potential to help females forget what they wished to forget. We presumed that psychologists and therapists should pay attention to the roles of sex difference in twofold, self and others, when studying people's memory and forgetting. Furthermore, the sensitivity of self and the emotion of others should be considered as well.
在日常生活中，记住或忘记他人的面孔至关重要。人们可以有意地忘记他们想要忘记的事情，这种现象被称为定向遗忘（DF）。本研究考察了刺激物的情绪以及参与者和刺激物的性别差异对定向遗忘的影响。我们使用开心和愤怒的面孔作为典型项目法范式中的项目，并进行了三项行为实验。在实验1中，我们招募了60名参与者，以考察刺激物的情绪以及参与者和刺激物的性别差异如何影响定向遗忘。在实验2中，我们招募了60名女性参与者，并操纵了学习阶段呈现项目的持续时间，以考察选择性复述理论是否成立。在实验3中，我们招募了50名女性参与者，并在测试阶段呈现的项目上附加了识别线索，以考察抑制控制理论是否成立。我们将实验1中参与者的性别、实验2中学习阶段呈现项目的持续时间作为组间因素，将刺激物的情绪和性别作为组内因素。我们基于信号检测理论对校正命中率、敏感性和偏差进行了混合设计方差分析。结果发现，男性参与者容易出现定向遗忘，而女性参与者则不然，因为女性具有更好的记忆表现和更强的敏感性。此外，我们发现女性参与者对愤怒的女性面孔和开心的男性面孔分别拥有最好和最差的识别率。我们的结果支持了选择性复述理论，表明学习阶段的操作有可能帮助女性忘记她们想要忘记的事情。我们推测，心理学家和治疗师在研究人们的记忆和遗忘时，应该从自我和他人两方面关注性别差异的作用。此外，还应考虑自我的敏感性和他人的情绪。
