Directed forgetting in the list method affects recognition memory for source

Abstract

The effects of list-method directed forgetting on recognition memory were explored. In Experiment 1 (N = 40), observers were instructed to remember words and their type-cases; in Experiment 2 (N = 80), the instruction was to remember words and their colours. Two lists of 10 words were presented; after the first list, half of the observers (forget) were instructed to forget that list, and the other half (remember) were not given the forget instruction. Recognition of items (words) as well as source (encoding list + case/colour) was measured for forget and remember observers. The forget instruction affected case/colour memory more consistently than item and list memory; a multinomial analysis indicated that source information was affected by the forget instructions. The results indicated that recognition of source information may be a more sensitive indicator of forgetting than recognition of items.

The authors are grateful to Lili Sahakyan, Peter Delaney, and Ute Bayen for their advice on multinomial models.