Neuroscience
Sometimes we're more likely to remember words that we were instructed to forget, while being more likely to forget words that we were instructed to remember. How can this be?
Fifty-six students were presented with four words from two different categories, (e.g. flower: lily; country: Russia; flower: tulip; country: Sweden). Crucially, half the students were told to remember these words, whereas the other students were told to forget them.
Next the students were asked to generate four novel examples from one of the previous categories (e.g. Flowers). To help, they were given the first two letters of a new example (e.g. Pa_ for pansy).
This whole process was repeated several times with different starting word pairings and categories. After a five-minute irrelevant distractor task, there was a final big recall test, in which the students were asked to recall as many of the original word pairings as possible. As you'd expect, overall, the students told to remember the original word pairings, did indeed remember more of them. But there is a twist.
For the students told to remember the original word pairings, generating novel word examples for a given category caused them to forget original words belonging to that same category. (They remembered 16 per cent fewer original words from categories for which new examples had to be generated). By contrast, the students told to forget the original words were not affected in this way.
The net result is that compared to the students told to remember, the students told to forget the initial word pairings actually remembered slightly more of the original words from categories for which new examples had to be generated.
A possible explanation is the students told to remember the original words, had mentally to inhibit these words when it came to generating fresh examples for a given category. This inhibition process affected their memory for these original words. By contrast, it seems students told to forget the original words didn't need to inhibit them during the word generation task – in a sense the original words had been protected from the inhibition process, making them more likely to be remembered later.
“Ironically, therefore, whereas the intention to remember may lead one to forget, the intention to forget, may lead one to remember,” the researchers said.
_________________________________
Storm, B.C., Bjork, E.L. & Bjork, R.A. (2007). When intended remembering leads to unintended forgetting. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60, 909-915.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Link to new research taking a biological approach to this idea.
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Neuroscience
How remembering can lead to forgetting
Sometimes we're more likely to remember words that we were instructed to forget, while being more likely to forget words that we were instructed to remember. How can this be?Fifty-six students were presented with four words from two different categories, (e.g. flower: lily; country: Russia; flower: tulip; country: Sweden). Crucially, half the students were told to remember these words, whereas the other students were told to forget them.
Next the students were asked to generate four novel examples from one of the previous categories (e.g. Flowers). To help, they were given the first two letters of a new example (e.g. Pa_ for pansy).
This whole process was repeated several times with different starting word pairings and categories. After a five-minute irrelevant distractor task, there was a final big recall test, in which the students were asked to recall as many of the original word pairings as possible. As you'd expect, overall, the students told to remember the original word pairings, did indeed remember more of them. But there is a twist.
For the students told to remember the original word pairings, generating novel word examples for a given category caused them to forget original words belonging to that same category. (They remembered 16 per cent fewer original words from categories for which new examples had to be generated). By contrast, the students told to forget the original words were not affected in this way.
The net result is that compared to the students told to remember, the students told to forget the initial word pairings actually remembered slightly more of the original words from categories for which new examples had to be generated.
A possible explanation is the students told to remember the original words, had mentally to inhibit these words when it came to generating fresh examples for a given category. This inhibition process affected their memory for these original words. By contrast, it seems students told to forget the original words didn't need to inhibit them during the word generation task – in a sense the original words had been protected from the inhibition process, making them more likely to be remembered later.
“Ironically, therefore, whereas the intention to remember may lead one to forget, the intention to forget, may lead one to remember,” the researchers said.
_________________________________
Storm, B.C., Bjork, E.L. & Bjork, R.A. (2007). When intended remembering leads to unintended forgetting. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60, 909-915.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Link to new research taking a biological approach to this idea.
- Want To Remember Something? Draw It
If you've got some revision to do, get yourself a sketch pad and start drawing out the words or concepts that you want to remember. That's the clear message from a series of studies in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology that demonstrates...
- Can We Deliberately Forget Specific Parts Of What We've Read?
The majority of research on memory is focused, as you might expect, on the remembering side of things - how much, how accurate and so on. There is, however, a parallel, but less known, line of investigation into our ability to deliberately forget. This...
- So-called 'implicit' Test Of Attitudes Is Affected By Social Desirability
A perennial problem with asking people about their views is that they are likely to moderate their answers to make them socially acceptable. The ‘implicit association test’ (IAT) is supposed to get round that problem by tapping into people’s deep-held...
- I Predict . . . Mindreading In The News
Note the difference below between the BBC headline and the next couple of sentences: Scientists 'can predict memories' Scientists say it may be possible to predict how well we will remember something before the event has even taken place. By...
- Sleep Deprivation And Learning
From the Science website: Asleep at the Memory Wheel By Greg Miller ScienceNOW Daily News 18 October 2006 ATLANTA, GEORGIA--Going a night without sleep may cause your hippocampus to go on strike. A new study has caught this crucial memory-encoding...