Mechanisms of Directed Forgetting

Abstract

Instructions to forget induce an S to adopt a strategy that modifies test performance. This chapter focuses on these strategies. Strategies of selective encoding, or selective processing (to-be-remembered (TBR) rehearsal or nonrehearsal of to-be-forgotten (TBF) items), are relatively not interesting as their effectivness is too closely tied to the conditions of a specific experimental procedure. Thus the chapter primarily focuses on the mechanisms of erasure and selective search. It presents various experiments to examine the viability of the selective search hypothesis, the data from which provide sufficient grounds for concluding that selective search can account for many of the findings of directed forgetting experiments. Further applications to directed forgetting would depend on the development of a model of selective search that provides much greater detail than the current general formulation. The erasure hypothesis is the most dramatic interpretation of directed forgetting. But unequivocal positive findings of erasure have not emerged in the directed forgetting literature. Thus one can conclude that voluntary erasure is only an expository fiction devised by investigators as a means for highlighting the features of other favored ideas.