其他摘要 | Unlike passive forgetting, which has been negatively labeled as "memory failure", active forgetting refers to an individual's ability to selectively forget unwanted memories. It can help individuals forget irrelevant or distracting information, thus saving cognitive resources and improving cognitive efficiency. It can also help individuals actively forget painful or unpleasant experiences, thus promoting psychologically healthy development. However, active forgetting is not an easy task, and some studies have questioned the validity of item-based directed forgetting cues. However, there are relatively few studies on the validity of directed forgetting, and the cognitive mechanisms of directed forgetting are still unclear. Thus, the present study used the item-method directed forgetting paradigm to examine the cognitive mechanism of directed forgetting by comparing directed forgetting and natural forgetting, and further exploring the methods of intervening directed forgetting and natural forgetting.
Study 1 explored the effectiveness of directed forgetting and its cognitive mechanism. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 set two types of natural forgetting cues as control conditions: One was To-be-ignored (referred to as TBI) condition with informative cues and instructions (Experiment 1), and the other was No cue (referred to as NC) condition without cues and instructions (Experiment 2). By comparing the hit rate of to-be-remembered (TBR), to-be-forgotten (TBF) and the natural forgetting conditions (TBI or NC), it was found that the hit rate of TBF and the natural forgetting conditions was significantly lower than that of TBR conditions, but there was no significant difference between TBF and TBI (or NC), which indicated that the directed forgetting and natural forgetting had similar forgetting effects. Experiment 3 mainly verified whether there was cue-induced automatic activation by comparing TBF, TBI conditions with cue-free blank screen conditions (NC). The results showed that cues did not trigger automatic activation. TBF and TBI conditions with cues did not have better memory performance than NC conditions without cues. Therefore, Experiment 3 did not support the automatic activation hypothesis. Experiment 4 combined directed forgetting cues and natural forgetting cues with post-cue probe task to test the influence of different cues on the following probe task in order to distinguish the active suppression and passive decay mechanism of TBF. The results showed that the probe task response time following TBF and TBI cue was significantly slower than TBR cue, suggesting that directed forgetting (and natural forgetting) may be related to active inhibitory processing. Experiment 5 further examined the inhibition failure hypothesis of directed forgetting by setting distraction task conditions and no distraction task conditions. It mainly examines how cognitive load affects directed forgetting and natural forgetting. The results showed that compared with the no-distraction condition, the TBF under the distraction condition was more identified as the old item, that is, the TBF rebound phenomenon occurred. This is consistent with the expectation of the inhibition failure hypothesis, that is, the distraction task will interfere with the inhibition process of directed forgetting items, resulting in inhibition failure and even a rebound effect of TBF. However, the natural forgetting was not affected by distraction tasks, which showed that directed forgetting and natural forgetting had different sensitivity to cognitive resources, and directed forgetting was more susceptible to cognitive load.
Study 2 explored the effect of directed forgetting on gist information (abstract meaning) and verbatim representation by combining directed forgetting paradigm with DRM words and Non-DRM words. In order to solve the limitation of the few key lures in previous studies, Experiment 6a first screened semantically high related words to increase the candidate words of critical lures that can induce false memory. Experiment 6b verified that the selected semantically high related words did have the similar effect to critical lures. Experiment 7 required participants to learn DRM and Non-DRM list words, and provided instruction cues for participants to remember or forget. The DRM list words (with both verbatim and gist representation) were compared with Non-DRM list words (with only verbatim representation but no gist representation) and critical lures (with only gist representation) to test the effect of directed forgetting cues on verbatim representation and gist information. The study found that directed forgetting cues have a stable inhibitory effect on verbatim representation and gist information. Experiment 8 further compared the effects of directed forgetting and natural forgetting on verbatim representation and gist information. It was found that directed forgetting and natural forgetting cues had similar inhibitory effects on verbatim representation and gist information.
Study 3 preliminarily explored the effect of multi-stage training on directed forgetting and natural forgetting. This study mainly adopted the method of two-day multi-stage training. Experiment 9 examined whether there would be a rebound effect of TBF by enhancing the participants' monitoring awareness of TBF during the training phase. The study found that after two rounds of training, the memory performance of directed forgetting condition in the final testing stage was significantly higher than that of natural forgetting condition, that is, enhancing the awareness of TBF monitoring will lead to the rebound effect of TBF. Experiment 10a and l Ob mainly aimed to change the processing strategy of natural forgetting condition by increasing the test probability of natural forgetting cue in the training stage, which led to the subjects mainly adopting the memory strategy for natural forgetting conditions. Thus, the study found that the memory performance of natural forgetting conditions in the formal test stage was significantly higher than that of directed forgetting conditions. Experiment lOc further investigated whether increasing the test probability of directed forgetting and natural forgetting conditions (both 50%) during the training phase can affect the individual's processing strategies for TBF and TBI. The study found that TBF and TBI not only had no significant difference in hit rate, but also increased the number of people who adopted memory strategies for both cues. The hit rates of TBF and TBI using memory strategies were significantly higher than those using other strategies. In short, the multi-stage training method can change the processing methods and processing strategies of directed forgetting and natural forgetting.
In summary, this study first tested the difference between directed forgetting andnatural forgetting, and investigated the cognitive mechanism of directed forgetting and natural forgetting, which theoretically expanded the cognitive mechanism of directed forgetting and natural forgetting. In addition, this study also innovatively proposed a multi-stage training method for intervention directed forgetting and natural forgetting processing strategies, which has both theoretical and application importance. On the whole, this study draws the following conclusions: (1) Directed forgetting and natural forgetting have similar forgetting effects; (2) Compared with natural forgetting, directed forgetting cues are not automatically activated; (3) Both directed forgetting and natural forgetting are active inhibition process, but directed forgetting is more susceptible to the interference of cognitive load; (4) Directed forgetting and natural forgetting have similar inhibitory effects on verbatim representation and gist information; (5) Multi-stage training can effectively intervene the processing strategies of directed forgetting and natural forgetting. |
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