Active forgetting: inhibition Flashcards
What is hypermnesia?
Memory improving over time, rather than following the standard forgetting function.
Does memory always get worse over time?
Not according to older research - Boreas (1930) found an initial increase in memory for poems after 12 hours.
What did Erdelyi and Becker (1974) find?
That using repeated recall tests, net gains in memory can be observed over time.
• especially with visual stimuli
• in some cases additional thinking can help.
• in most cases hypermnesia requires consistent increases in “retrieval effort”.
How did Erdelyi and Becker explain their findings?
Normal memory is the result of two processes - reminiscence and forgetting. Where forgetting is low and reminiscence (e.g. pts given more time to put in extra retrieval effort) is high, a net gain in memory over time (hypermnesia) can be observed.
What did Scriver and Safer (1988) study?
The practical applications of hypermnesia and inhibition in memory, through watching a burglary tape (recall, questionnaire, recall, questionnaire, recall).
What did Scriver and Safer (1988) find?
Recall does seem to improve over time, though this may be partly due to limited recall time and 47 box detail procedure.
What have more recent studies found regarding hypermnesia effects?
- replicated for emotional items - may be stronger in negatively arousing conditions (Kern, Libkumen and Otani, 2002)
- demonstrated in recognition - therefore not all retrieval effort (Groninger and Murray, 2004)
- stressing of the role of inhibition as a general process in memory storage and retrieval (e.g. Anderson 2003, 2005)
What did Slamecka (1968) do?
A simple demonstration of associative cueing going wrong - if given half of the cues for a word list (e.g. 15 of the 30 rare words), the data are counter-intuitive - it makes it MORE difficult to recall the other items in the list.
How are Slamecka (1968)’s findings interpreted?
Strategy disruption and active inhibition.
What did Anderson, Bjork and Bjork (1994) find regarding retrieval induced forgetting?
• had pts encode category-exemplar pairs, practicing the retrieval of half of the pairs.
• at final test, cued recall is:
- average for unpracticed categories.
- enhanced for practiced exemplars of practice categories
- impaired for unpracticed exemplars of practiced categories.
I.e. Practicing fruit-orange inhibits fruit-banana.
What did Bjork (1970), Johnson (1994) and Anderson (2005) find about directed forgetting?
(Asking pts to learn a list, then telling them to forget it and learn another list)
• recall for the second list is better than the first list.
• recall of the first list is worse than the control condition, who learnt both lists but weren’t told to forget anything.
• forgetting condition pts learned the second list better than the control - inhibiting previous list, making encoding better for the second?
What is the difference between list-method and item-method directed forgetting?
List method involves memorisation of two full lists and then being told to forget one, whereas item method involves learning a list and then being told to remember half of them.
What are the findings of item-method directed forgetting?
Remember items are enhanced relative to forget ones in both recall and recognition.
How are the findings of item-method directed forgetting generally interpreted?
Selective rehearsal of to be remembered items - an encoding effect rather than inhibition of items in storage.
What results are generally found in list-method directed forgetting?
Large recall (not recognition) deficits for to be forgotten lists relative to to be remembered or control lists.
