Context-dependent impairment of recollection in list-method directed forgetting

Abstract

In list-method directed forgetting, people's ability to forget one of the sets of learned material is examined. Research shows that memory for to-be-forgotten items is impaired when assessed by a recall test and by recognition tests reliant on recollective processes. Retrieval inhibition and context-change mechanisms have been proposed to account for the directed forgetting effects and both of them account for the results obtained with recognition tests. However, the context change account makes a specific prediction that recollection is impaired by directed forgetting only if it makes use of contextual associations. In the present study, directed forgetting was examined with two types of recollection-based tasks making use of different types of associations, namely a list discrimination task utilising contextual associations and an associative recognition task utilising interitem associations. Consistent with the context change account, the costs of directed forgetting were observed in a list discrimination task and were not observed in an associative recognition task. The results indicate that impairment in recollection due to directed forgetting is not general and provide converging evidence to support the context-change account.

Keywords:

• Directed forgetting
• Context change
• Recollection

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a grant from the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education awarded to the first author (N N106 065735).

Notes

¹In the present paper we use the term “context” when we refer to a global mental context accompanying study of a whole list. Consequently, context-independent recollection refers to recollection that does not rely on item-to-global context associations. Such processes can instead utilise item-to-item associations, what is sometimes referred to in the literature as a local context.