240909 Mind Brain
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Transcript 240909 Mind Brain
List-method directed forgetting of
neutral and emotional words
Simon Nørby, PhD
Department of Learning
Aarhus University
The directed forgetting paradigm: Description
Subjects are lead to believe that they should forget about a previously
shown list of items.
(see MacLeod, 1998)
Four phases (always two lists)
Presentation of list 1
An unexpected instruction to forget list 1 items
Presentation of list 2
Free recall and maybe other memory tests
Inferior recall of List 1 compared to list 2 items (or in relation to a control
group).
(see Bjork et al., 2006; MacLeod, 1998)
The directed forgetting paradigm: Explanation
Inhibition: What?
Attempting inhibition of a bad memory
Some mechanism lowers the state
of activation of a memory.
(see Bjork, 1989)
Inhibition: How?
Active forgetting in contrast to other
theories (e.g. decay; interference).
(see Anderson, 2005)
Inhibition: Why?
Forgetting in tests of recall but not
recognition.
(e.g. Basden, Basden & Gargano, 1993)
From MacLeod, 2003
Design
Aims
To investigate forgetting of emotional and neutral stimuli. To test the
“long-term” effect of volitional forgetting.
Background
Most studies on violational forgetting use neutral stimuli, but there are
reasons that forgetting of emotional material may be especially difficult.
People often want to retain positive and forget negative memories. The
question about whether or not this is possible has clinical relevance.
Most studies on violational forgetting apply immidiate tests. Important to
investigate whether violational forgetting has prolonged effects.
Design
Subjects
Danish students and recent graduates between 18 and 35 years of age.
Materials
48 Danish nouns (controlled for word-length, frequency, semantics, concreteness,
emotionality).
16 negative, 16 positive and 16 neutral nouns.
Distributed evenly among conditions.
E.g.: “tumor”, “gift”, “handle”.
Procedure
A standard list-method DF paradigm. The “whoops method”. A re-test after one
week (+/- 4 timer).
Results (1st session)
Recall of neutral list 1 words inferior to
recall of neutral list 2 words.
Recall
50
Recall %
40
30
List 1
Recall of negative list 1 words slightly
superior to recall of negative list 2 words.
List 2
20
10
Recall of positive list 1 words inferior to
recall of positive list 2 words.
0
Neutral
Negative
Positive
Results (2nd session)
Recall
Increased difference in recall of list 1 and
list 2 neutral words.
50
Recall %
40
30
List 1
List 2
Increased difference in recall of list 1 and
list 2 negative words.
20
10
0
Neutral
Negative
Positive
Still a minor difference in recall of list 1
and list 2 positive words.
Interpretation
It is hard to forget negative memories, and
attempts to do so may increase recall of
such memories, especially over time.
Bad is strong (and stronger than good).
Ironic processing of negative material
(see Baumeister et al., 2001; Wenzlaff & Wegner, 2000)
The result is consistent with the outcome of
a study that employed the Think/no-think
paradigm.
Indicate that it is hard to forget the most
unwanted memories, i.e., unpleasant
memories.
30
Baseline corrected recall (%)
NoThink: Emotional
NoThink: Neutral
Think: Emotional
Think: Neutral
20
10
0
-10
0 (Baseline)
8
16
Repetitions
(from Nørby, Lange & Larsen,
2010)
Interpretation
The increased forgetting effect on the neutral items over time could
be due to:
Inhibition not taking immediate effect.
Emotional list 1 items having processing priority
A remember-remember control group should be engaged.
A new experiment should investigate the temporal aspect further.
That was it…
Thanks to:
Axel Larsen
Christian Gerlach
Learning Lab Denmark (DPU)
Center for Visual Cognition (KU)