Control of Conscious Contents in Directed Forgetting and Thought Suppression
نویسنده
چکیده
Directed forgetting is a successful method for thought control whereas thought suppression is notoriously ineffective. We tested a specific hypothesis about what difference between the two paradigms causes the difference in outcomes. Both paradigms instruct participants to suppress certain thoughts, but in thought suppression experiments participants are also told to report intrusions of unwanted thoughts. We added a condition to the typical directed forgetting experiment that instructed participants to report intrusions. When participants tried to forget a word list but also reported intrusions, forgetting did not occur. The results are important for understanding control of conscious contents and have implications for practicable applications of individual thought control.
منابع مشابه
On the Cost and Benefit of Taking it out of Context: Modeling the Inhibition Associated with Directed Forgetting
Forgetting can occur as the result of unconscious or automatic memory processes or as the result of conscious control. The later form of forgetting is often referred to as suppression, repression, or inhibition, and it is investigated in the laboratory using the directed forgetting procedure. The authors describe and empirically test the first formal model of directed forgetting, implemented wi...
متن کاملChildren (but not adults) can inhibit false memories.
The role of inhibition in children's (5-, 7-, and 11-year-olds') false memory illusions in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm was examined using a list-wise directed-forgetting procedure. Children studied either a single DRM list (control) or two DRM lists in succession with a directed-remembering instruction or a directed-forgetting instruction between list presentations. The findings...
متن کاملForgetting unwanted memories: directed forgetting and thought suppression methods.
Experimental psychopathologists have tested hypotheses regarding mechanisms that ought to be operative if victims possess skills for forgetting material related to trauma. In this article, we review research on directed forgetting and thought suppression paradigms, concentrating on laboratory studies involving attempts by individuals reporting trauma histories to forget emotionally negative mat...
متن کاملThe Role of Inhibitory Control in Forgetting Unwanted Memories: A Consideration of Three Methods
When confronted with reminders to things that we would prefer not to think about, we often attempt to put the unwanted memories out of awareness. Here, I argue that the ability to control memory is a special case of a broad class of situations thought to require executive control: response override. In such situations, one must stop a strong habitual response to a stimulus due to situational de...
متن کاملOh, 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. Expe...
متن کامل