The Disruption and Dissolution of Directed Forgetting: Inhibitory Control of Memory

• Published in: Journal of memory and language Vol. 43; no. 3; pp. 409 - 430
• Main Authors: Conway, Martin A, Harries, Kay, Noyes, Jan, Racsma'ny, Mihaly, Frankish, Clive R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Diego, CA Elsevier Inc 01.10.2000; Elsevier; Academic Press; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: autobiographical memory; Biological and medical sciences; control processes; directed forgetting; encoding; forgetting; free recall; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; inhibition; Learning. Memory; long-term memory; Memory; output interference; Psychology; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; recognition; free recall; forgetting; autobiographical memory; control processes; output interference; directed forgetting; recognition; inhibition; encoding; long-term memory; Human; Forgetting; Recognition memory; Free recall; Memory; Interference; Autobiographical memory; Cognition; Experimental study; Mental load; Long term; Concurrent task; Inhibition; Cognitive control
• ISSN: 0749-596X; 1096-0821
• DOI: 10.1006/jmla.2000.2706

In a series of directed-forgetting (DF) experiments it was found that inhibition of a to-be-forgotten (TBF) list could be disrupted by a secondary task and completely abolished by a concurrent memory load during second to-be-remembered (TBR) list learning. Similarly, inhibition was found to be wholly abolished when the TBF and TBR list were strongly associated but not when weakly associated. These findings suggest that inhibition in the DF procedure depends on how powerfully the second TBR list competes in memory with the representation of the TBF list. When the representation of the TBR list is impoverished or when it is too similar to the TBF list then competition is weak and inhibition is as a consequence weak or does not occur at all.