Adult age differences in retrieval: Trace-dependent and cue-dependent forgetting.

A multitrial free recall task was presented to 3 age groups of men and women (18-34, 50-64, and 65-83 yrs) under cued and noncued recall conditions to determine whether age-related differences in retrieval were attributable to the availability of elementary units (trace-dependent forgetting), the accessibility of higher order units (cue-dependent forgetting), or both. Results show significant age differences in words recalled, categories recalled (accessibility), and words recalled per category (availability). It is concluded that adult age differences in retrieval are a function of both cue-dependent and trace-dependent forgetting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Associative priming in word fragment completion: a dissociation between explicit and implicit retrieval processes

Three experiments investigated associative priming in word fragment completion. In associative priming, the study word that acts as a prime is semantically related in some way to the response word that the subject must produce or respond to at test. For example, a prime might be semantically related to the solution to its paired word fragment (e.g. study "VANILLA", solve fragment "-H-C--A-E" at test, solution is "CHOCOLATE"). Associative priming therefore differs from both repetition and conceptual priming, in which the studied primes are themselves the words that must be produced or responded to at test. In Experiment 1, associative primes were found to influence word fragment completion performance on an explicit test, but not on an implicit test. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the effects of associative primes on explicitly instructed fragment completion cannot be attributed to the specific information about cue-prime relationships that is included in the explicit instructions. Experiment 3 demonstrated that a manipulation of modality, a variable known to disrupt implicit retrieval processes, disrupts repetition priming on an explicit test, but not associative priming. The results of these three experiments suggest that whereas repetition primes are retrieved from memory by both explicit and implicit retrieval processes, associative primes are retrieved by only explicit processes. These data suggest that implicit retrieval processes are cue-dependent processes which automatically retrieve memory information that provides a good match to retrieval cues. Explicit retrieval processes are cue-independent, functioning as an intentional retrieval set to access particular categories or types of memory information.     

Remembering Can Cause Inhibition: Retrieval-Induced Inhibition as Cue Independent Process.

Previous experiments have mostly relied on recall as a dependent measure to assess whether retrieval of information from memory causes inhibition of related information. This study aimed to measure this inhibition in a more direct way. In Experiment 1, it was shown that repeated retrieval of exemplars from a category resulted in longer recognition latencies to nonretrieved exemplars from that same category, compared with recognition latencies to control exemplars. Experiment 2 obtained the same pattern of results using a lexical decision task. This was the 1st time that retrieval-induced forgetting was demonstrated on an implicit test of memory. To exclude noninhibitory explanations of the data, the exemplars were presented in both experiments without their categories as cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A transfer-appropriate processing account of context effects in word-fragment completion.

The claim that priming on implicit memory tasks such as word-fragment completion is sensitive to context effects was tested by using homographs (e.g., board) to manipulate context. On the basis of previous findings, it was assumed that presentation of only the perceptual cue at test (oa d) should activate the dominant meaning, thereby creating the same context for homographs encoded for their dominant encoding and a different context for homographs encoded for their nondominant meaning. As expected, little or no effect of varying context was observed on a perceptual implicit task (Experiments 1–2B). When explicit retrieval instructions were given in Experiment 3, same-context encoding led to greater recall of homographs from word-fragment cues relative to different-context encoding. These results are consistent with the predictions of the transfer-appropriate-processing view because little advantage for the same-context condition was obtained in implicit tests in the absence of conceptual cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theoretical implications of extralist probes for directed forgetting.

In 5 experiments, the authors examined the influence of associative information in list-method directed forgetting, using the extralist cuing procedure (Nelson & McEvoy, 2005). Targets were studied in the absence of cues, but during retrieval, related cues were used to test their memory. Experiment 1 manipulated the degree of resonant connections from associates of the target back to the target. Experiment 2 varied the degree of connectivity of associates of the target. Experiment 3 varied the size of the associative neighborhood of the target. Experiment 4 varied the direct target-to-cue strength, and Experiment 5 varied the indirect strength between the cue and the target. Reliable directed forgetting impairment emerged in all experiments. Furthermore, directed forgetting reduced the effects of the associates contributing to the target activation strength (Experiments 1–2), and it also reduced the effects of the associates contributing to the cue–target intersection strength (Experiments 3–5). Together, these results support the context account and challenge the inhibitory interpretation of directed forgetting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Remembering remembering.

We developed a laboratory analogue of the "forgot-it-all-along" effect that J. W. Schooler, M. Bendiksen, and Z. Ambadar (1997) proposed for cases of "recovered memories" in which individuals had forgotten episodes of talking about the abuse when they were supposedly amnestic for it. In Experiment 1, participants studied homographs with disambiguating context words; in Test 1 they received studied- or other-context words as cues; and in Test 2 they received studied-context cues and judged whether they had recalled each item during Test 1. In Experiment 2, retrieval cues were manipulated on both tests. In Experiment 3, both the studied- and other-context cues corresponded to the same meaning of each homograph. In Experiment 4, Test 1 was free recall, and studied- versus other-context cues were presented in Test 2. Participants more often forgot that they had previously recalled an item if they were cued to think of it differently on the two tests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of retrieval practice in directed forgetting.

Three experiments tested the possibility that retrieval-induced forgetting is responsible for directed forgetting with the list method. In Experiments 1 and 2, additional List 2 retrieval practice was given to determine whether this would increase directed forgetting. In Experiment 1 all items came from a single category, and in Experiment 2 unrelated words were used. In Experiment 3 additional List 2 study accompanied List 2 retrieval practice. There was no evidence that List 2 retrieval practice, with or without additional List 2 study, affected the magnitude of directed forgetting. It was argued that retrieval-induced forgetting could not account for these results. Accounts with greater viability include retrieval strategy disruption and a modified version of the dissociation hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On recollections lost: When practice makes imperfect.

Recent research has demonstrated that the act of remembering can prompt forgetting or, more specifically, the inhibition of specific items in memory (M. C. Anderson & B. A. Spellman, 1995). This line of inquiry was extended through an investigation of the process and consequences of retrieval-induced forgetting in social cognition. Across 3 studies, the findings clarify several unresolved issues in the psychology of forgetting. First, it was demonstrated that retrieval-induced forgetting extends to issues in social cognition (Experiment 1). Second, forgetting can be elicited even in task contexts in which perceivers are highly motivated to remember the presented material (Experiment 2). Third, forgetting is not moderated by the amount of retrieval practice that perceivers experience (Experiment 3). These findings are considered in the context of recent treatments of cognitive inhibition and goal-directed forgetting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Oh, honey, I already forgot that: Strategic control of directed forgetting in older and younger adults.

Two experiments investigated list-method directed forgetting with older and younger adults. Using standard directed forgetting instructions, significant forgetting was obtained with younger but not older adults. However, in Experiment 1 older adults showed forgetting with an experimenter-provided strategy that induced a mental context change--specifically, engaging in diversionary thought. Experiment 2 showed that age-related differences in directed forgetting occurred because older adults were less likely than younger adults to initiate a strategy to attempt to forget. When the instructions were revised to downplay their concerns about memory, older adults engaged in effective forgetting strategies and showed significant directed forgetting comparable in magnitude to younger adults. The results highlight the importance of strategic processes in directed forgetting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Knowing what to remember and forget: a developmental study of cue memory in intentional forgetting

These experiments are the first to investigate children's encoding and use of information about a memory cue in Bjork's (1972) intentional forgetting task. In Experiment 1, children in Grades 2, 4, and 6 and college students were given cues to either remember or forget after the presentation of each picture. Recall and recognition tests of pictures and cues followed. The procedure in Experiment 2 was identical to that in Experiment 1 except that the list of presentation pictures was altered for some children (Grades 3 and 4) and adolescents (Grades 8 and 9) so that remember and forget cues were associated with particular taxonomic categories. In Experiment 3, the testing component was modified so that children (Grades 2, 3, and 4) and college students were asked to recall only the cue associated with each picture. The results indicated that (1) children as young as second graders encode the cue associated with each picture, although to a lesser extent than do college students, (2) much improvement in intentional forgetting is still occurring during adolescence, (3) only adults adequately cluster their recall by cue, (4) associating remember and forget cues with items from different categories does not increase the differentiation between cues, and (5) eliminating picture recall and recognition has minimal effects on the magnitude of cue judgments. These results suggest that children's difficulties on intentional forgetting tasks stem, at least in part, from their poorer encoding of information about whether an item should be remembered or forgotten.     

Prospective memory and aging: Forgetting intentions over short delays.

Retrieved intentions often cannot be performed immediately and must be maintained until there is an opportunity to perform them. In 3 experiments, on seeing a target event, younger and older participants were to withhold an action until they encountered the appropriate phase of the experiment. When initial retrieval was made facile by the use of a salient retrieval cue, the age-related decrements were often dramatic, even over unfilled delay intervals as brief as 10 s (Experiments 1 and 2). When initial retrieval was difficult, older adults showed no forgetting over the retention interval (Experiment 3). Several theoretical perspectives were offered as explanations for the age differences observed with salient retrieval cues, including those that focus on age differences in metamemory, the degree to which plans are reformulated, and the ability to nonstrategically maintain current concerns in working memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stimulus generalization, context change, and forgetting.

Forgetting is often attributed to retrieval failure caused by background contextual cues changing over time. However, generalization between stimuli may increase over time and make them increasingly interchangeable. If this effect occurs with contextual cues, it might cancel any effect of a changing context. The authors review the evidence and suggest a resolution of this paradox. Although generalization gradients can change over time, the effect is not always strong. Increased responding to nontarget stimuli is not often shown, and few studies have demonstrated such changes with contextual cues in a way that rules out other interpretations. Even this example of forgetting may be caused by retrieval failure. The physical contexts manipulated in learning and memory experiments themselves occur within a superordinate temporal context and can thus be forgotten with no inherent challenge to a context-change account of forgetting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Source of cues for cue-dependent amnesia in rats.

In 2 experiments 54 Sprague-Dawley male albino rats were given extensive training in a complicated appetitive maze and then handled extensively for 7 days. On the 7th day of the retention interval some Ss were exposed to the "cognitive" learning cues of the maze and some were not. Immediately afterward Ss were given ECS or sham ECS. To the extent that cognitive learning cues are assumed to activate memory, the ECS impaired retrieval of memory only for those Ss which had the cues reinstated prior to ECS administration. It appears that memory must be active at the time of ECS in order to obtain retrieval deficits. In a 3rd experiment with 36 Ss the intensity of hunger drive, manipulated by the amount of prefeeding, was not a cue for memory activation and subsequent cue-dependent amnesia. Arousal is therefore not believed to be crucial for the effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Is the Context Shift Effect a Case of Retrieval Failure? The Effects of Retrieval Enhancing Treatments on Forgetting Under Altered Stimulus Conditions in Rats.

This series of experiments sought to clarify the role of retrieval failure in forgetting that results from a change in context between training and testing (the context shift effect [CSE]). Because spontaneous forgetting (SF) is generally considered to reflect a retrieval failure, the effects of three manipulations known to alleviate SF were examined on forgetting due to an explicit shift in context at a short delay (24 hr). Pretest exposure to a reminder treatment involving the reinforcer from training (Experiment 1), pretest amphetamine administration (Experiment 2), and overtraining (Experiment 3) alleviated both SF and the CSE, supporting the view that the CSE reflects a retrieval deficit. Implications for the context change account of SF are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparing word fragment completion and cued recall with letter cues.

Cued recall with word stems as cues and fragment completion rely on different types of letter cues and also differ in the explicit–implicit nature of the retrieval orientation. Despite these differences, variables effective in one task may be effective in the other because both rely on letter cues. Two variables known to affect cued recall were manipulated: Lexical set size (number of words that fit the letter cue) and meaning set size (number of associates generated to the studied words). Across four experiments, subjects in each task were less likely to recover targets from larger lexical sets. However, meaning set size affected cued recall but not fragment completion. These results indicate that fragment completion and letter-cued recall are based on lexical search but that cued recall also involves a semantic search component. Furthermore, type of retrieval cue had a greater effect than type of retrieval orientation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of intentional forgetting in reducing children's retroactive interference.

Preschool and kindergarten children's retention of stories was examined in the presence of interfering information and instructions to forget. Children learned 2 stories and, 24 hr later, were asked to recall the 1st or 2nd story learned. Some of the children were instructed, either following acquisition or just prior to the retention test to forget the 2nd, or interfering, story. A model was used to isolate storage and retrieval effects, and the results showed that (a) retroactive interference affected both storage- and retrieval-based forgetting rates for the younger children but only storage-based forgetting rates for the older children, (b) intentional forgetting reduced retroactive interference primarily by attenuating storage-based forgetting regardless of age, (c) intentional forgetting instructions were effective only at acquisition for preschoolers but at both acquisition and retention for kindergarteners, and (d) all children recalled the to-be-forgotten story as well as they recalled the to-be-remembered story. These results are interpreted in terms of reorganization and distinctiveness effects in storage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Search of associative memory.

Describes search of associative memory (SAM), a general theory of retrieval from long-term memory that combines features of associative network models and random search models. It posits cue-dependent probabilistic sampling and recovery from an associative network, but the network is specified as a retrieval structure rather than a storage structure. A quantitative computer simulation of SAM was developed and applied to the part-list cuing paradigm. When free recall of a list of words was cued by a random subset of words from that list, the probability of recalling one of the remaining words was less than if no cues were provided at all. SAM predicted this effect in all its variations by making extensive use of interword associations in retrieval, a process that previous theorizing has dismissed. (55 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Optimizing cue effectiveness: Recall of 500 and 600 incidentally learned words.

Examined prerequisites on optimal memory performance of large amounts of verbal materials in 3 cued-recall experiments with 28 undergraduates. In Exp I, Ss defined their own retrieval cues by generating 1 or 3 properties of features for each of 504 words. Results indicate that the level of recall was directly related to the amount of retrieval information provided. Results of Exp II show that self-generated cues were much more effective than those generated by someone else. In both experiments, performance decreased over 1-, 2-, and 7-day retention intervals. Findings of Exp III, with 600 words to be remembered, replicated those of Exps I and III. Distinctiveness and compatibility of retrieval cues are proposed as 2 necessary prerequisites to perfect recall performance. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intentional forgetting as a facilitator for recalling new product attributes.

When market changes alter what product attributes are deemed important, consumers may intentionally try to forget old product information in an attempt to remember new product information. In Experiment 1, the authors demonstrated that intentional forgetting of this nature temporarily inhibits retrieval of old product information and leads to a benefit to memory for new product information. The results show that, after a short delay, benefits continue in the absence of costs, which is supportive of a multiple-process account of intentional forgetting. Experiment 2 extends these effects using an advertising message to stimulate forgetting. Across both experiments, results also show that brand preference is based on learning of new attribute information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of signaling retention interval length on delayed matching-to-sample in pigeons.

Pigeons were trained initially on a delayed matching task in which colors served as sample and comparison stimuli. During subsequent training, additional stimuli compounded with the sample signaled whether that trial involved a short (1 s) or a long (5 s) delay. In Experiment 1, miscuing reduced accuracy at the short delay markedly and tended to increase accuracy at the long delay slightly. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed a robust effect of cuing when the cues followed sample termination, thereby refuting the view that such cues evoke differential attention to the sample stimulus. Experiment 4 revealed that the cues did not influence rate of forgetting, and Experiment 5 revealed no effect of point of cue placement within the retention interval. It was concluded that cues correlated with retention interval length modulated matching accuracy independently of memory, perhaps by signaling different rates of reinforcement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)