Incidental & Motivated Forgetting Flashcards
How does TIME influence forgetting?
• Decay: memory traces rely on activated stored networks of neurons. Neurons die, connections weaken/change; resulting in neural decay of the trace.
Hard to prove as many factors are confounded with the passage of time.
• Context changes: the context of a memory is a strong cue for retrieval (encoding specificity). As time passes contexts change = harder to use the current context as a cue.
Also any mental activity (daydreaming, imagination) that changes context will impair performance on a memory task.
How does INTERFERENCE influence forgetting?
Retrieval relies on the use of a good cue. When cues get associated with multiple items the cue becomes less effective, because other associated items (competitors) interfere with retrieving the target. e.g. when you know there are exotic fruits on the list retrieving the associated word ‘mango’ may interfere with retrieving ‘kiwi’.
Complex memories with many features and multiple, shared retrieval cues risk more interference.
What are the effects of retroactive and proactive interference? Provide some evidence.
• RETROACTIVE interference (from later learning):
Barnes & Underwood (1959): learn two lists of word pairs, in series. The control group skips second‐list learning. Final cued‐recall: memory for List2 increases with practice, while List1 declines with List2 practice.
Baddeley & Hitch (1977) rugby players’ memory for the names of teams recently played. Tendency for recent events to interfere with memory of past similar events.
• PROACTIVE interference (from previous learning):
Underwood (1957): learn two lists of word pairs. The control group skips first‐list learning. Meta‐analysis of cued-recall data (following a 24‐hour delay): List2 memory decreases as the number of preceding lists increases.
What is the part-list cueing effect? What are some explanations for it?
It is a form of Interference during retrieval.
Cokely et al. (2006) when part of the list is given as a retrieval cue, subjects remember fewer of the remaining items compared to controls who did not receive the part‐list cues.
Why?
o increased activation of cued items (retrieval depends on) interferes with remaining items;
o interferes with retrieval plans associated with subjects’ organization of the list during encoding;
o Retrieval‐induced forgetting: retrieval of any particular item inhibits retrieval of remaining items.
Name and explain three possible explanations of RETRIEVAL‐INDUCED FORGETTING. Which one is the most supported by evidence?
Retrieval practice on orange but not banana or any members from the drink category (baseline) facilitates recall of the practiced items, whereas unpractised items from practiced categories suffer retrieval‐induced forgetting.
Why?
o Blocking account: practiced items could block target recall during the final test. Retrieval of A increases its activation and biases retrieval competition in favour of A over B (e.g. a new password becomes more active than an old password);
o Unlearning account: the connection between cue and target could have been unlearned during retrieval practice. The erroneous retrieval of B when searching for A leads to a weakening of the relation between cue and B (e.g. trying to forget an old password);
o Inhibition account: a reduction in the target memory’s activation, itself. Retrieval of A is aided by suppression of B (e.g. the old password is still maintained in memory, but its inhibition prevents its interference)
What’s the evidence for the inhibition account?
Only inhibition correctly predicts that forgetting generalizes to independent cues. Forgetting of the A‐Y association due to retrieval of the A‐X association transfers to forgetting of a B‐Y association (i.e. the forgetting is not cue‐specific).
Forgetting of A‐Y does not occur when there is extra study practice of A‐X; extra learning of A‐X does not require inhibition of A‐Y.
Even impossible or unsuccesfull retrieval attempts lead to retrieval-induced forgetting.
Strong competitors suffer most from retrieval‐induced forgetting.
Retrieval‐induced forgetting requires attention: effects of divided attention [Román et al. (2009)] and stress [Koessler et al. (2009)] on retrieval‐induced forgetting.
What area of the brain is involved in ihinition of conpetitors for retrieval?
Kuhl et al. (2007) fMRI as they performed retrieval practice trials on studied items. More inhibition required on trial 1 than on trial 3. Brain areas involved in retrieval‐induced forgetting: vlPFC related to resolution of response conflict/ inhibition. Subjects with large difference in vlPFC activity on trial 1 vs trial 3 have more retrieval-induced forgetting.
There are two methods to examine intentional forgetting of memory items, which ones?
Item method: presenting items individually with an instruction, after each, to remember or forget.
List method: after the first list indicate that the list can be forgotten. Allows to present many items before participants receive the instruction to forget it and learn a second list. Memory is impaired for the first list in the forget condition; second‐list performance is augmented.
What mechanisms could explain how motivated forgetting takes plece?
o Impaired encoding/rehearsal (only in item method): knowing the item will not be tested stops further processing of it.
o Contextual shift: a forget instruction alters the current context representation. When the lists context is very different from the current context retrieval is impaired ( Context Maintenance and Retrieval model; CMR)
o Inhibition account: same process as retrieval‐induced forgetting: Instruction to forget results in inhibition of the items.
Provide some behavioral and neural evidence for the inhibition account in motivated forgetting.
Think/no‐think (TNT) experiment: after learning word pairs, participants are asked to either think or not think about an item’s associate. Memory for all items is then assessed. Two types of final tests (same or indipendent probe) –> No-think instruction leads to forgetting of the items. Forgetting is probe(cue)-independent
Inhibition account in the brain:
Anderson et al. (2004): neuroimaging results: lPFC is recruited during no‐think trials to suppress neural activity in the hippocampus,preventing unwanted memories from coming to mind.
What factor emerges as crucial in forgetting earlier instances of remembering childhood abuse?
Contex. During the recovered-memory experience, women remembered the abuse in a different way than they had previously (e.g., more completely, more episodically, or with a qualitatively different interpretation), such that the experience of remembering was very emotionally intense and qualitatively different from their previous recollections of the abuse.
What is the FORGOT‐IT‐ALL‐ALLONG EFFECT (FIA)?
When the context changes from one test to another, subjects often forget during the second test that they had recalled an item on the first test. Recollecting an event in manner X may cause one to forget having previously recollected it in manner Y.
*based on the knew‐it‐all‐along effect (Fischoff, 1982): when people receive information they tend to overestimate their knowledge prior to receiving the information
ARNOLD & LINDSAY (2002) – REMEMBERING REMENBERING
Describe the experimental procedure.
Phase 1: Learn pairs of (homographs) target words + (disambiguating) context word. e.g: hand (context) ‐ PALM (target)
Phase 2: immediate Cued recall of 2/3 of the associated target word. ½ cue words are context word from phase 1 and ½ are other semantically related context word. So either > Hand – p _ _ m (studied context) or > Tree – p _ _ m (other context)
Subjects were instructed only to respond with answers they remembered seeing during phase 1 to refrain from guessing (“pass” option).
5-min break.
Phase 3: Second Cued recall (on all targets) all context words from the original study list (phase 1).
Remembered before? After responding they are asked whether they had also recalled the same target word during phase 2 (the first cued recall test).
ARNOLD & LINDSAY (2002) – REMEMBERING REMENBERING
Proportion correctly recalled on Test 1 was significantly higher for items cued with studied-context words. Participants were significantly more likely to forget that they had recalled an item on Test 1 if it had been cued with the other-context word.
In further experiments Arnold and Lindsay replicated their findings in conditions in which the meaning of the word did not change, but the context did.
Together these experiments provide evidence that a change in context (thinking about something in a qualitatively different way) can lead to the forgetting of prior recollections (=FIA effect) –> Encoding specificity (Tulving & Thomson, 1973). Recalling prior episodes of recollection is likely similar to recalling other types of past episodes.
