It is still debated whether suppressing the retrieval of unwanted memories causes forgetting and whether this constitutes a beneficial mechanism. To shed light on these two questions, we scrutinize the evidence for such suppression-induced forgetting (SIF) and examine whether it is deficient in psychological disorders characterized by intrusive thoughts. Specifically, we performed a focused metaanalysis of studies that have used the Think/No-Think procedure to test SIF in individuals either affected by psychological disorders or exhibiting high scores on related traits. Overall, across 96 effects from 25 studies, we found that avoiding retrieval leads to significant forgetting in healthy individuals, with a small to moderate effect size (0.28, 95% CI [0.14, 0.43]). Importantly, this effect was indeed larger than for more anxious (-0.21, 95% CI [-0.41,-0.02]) or depressed individuals (0.05, 95% CI [-0.19, 0.29])-though estimates for the healthy may be inflated by publication bias. In contrast, individuals with a stronger repressive coping style showed greater SIF (0.42, 95% CI [0.32, 0.52]). Furthermore, moderator analyses revealed that SIF varied with the exact suppression mechanism that participants were instructed to engage. For healthy individuals, the effect sizes were considerably larger when instructions induced specific mechanisms of direct retrieval suppression or thought substitution than when they were unspecific. These results suggest that intact suppression-induced forgetting is a hallmark of psychological well-being, and that inducing more specific suppression mechanisms fosters voluntary forgetting.

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It is hotly debated whether suppressing the retrieval of unwanted memories constitutes a beneficial mechanism that causes forgetting. Here, we scrutinize the evidence for such suppression-induced forgetting (SIF) and examine whether it is deficient in psychological disorders characterized by intrusive thoughts. Specifically, we performed a focused meta-analysis of studies that have used the Think/No-Think procedure to test SIF in individuals either affected by psychological disorders or exhibiting high scores on related traits. First, our analysis of the control samples (N = 534) indicated that avoiding retrieval indeed leads to reliable forgetting in healthy participants. Overall, the effect size was moderate to small (SMCC = 0.31, 95% CI [0.16, 0.45]) and remained significant after attempting to account for publication bias. However, moderator analyses revealed that this effect varied according to the exact mechanism that participants were instructed to engage, with the greatest effect size observed for direct retrieval suppression (SMCC = 0.63, 95% CI [0.36, 0.90]). Second, we found no evidence for SIF in the clinical/sub-clinical samples (N = 534, SMCC = 0.07, 95% CI [- 0.13, 0.28]). Critically, SIF in these samples was significantly smaller than in the respective control samples (SMD = 0.26 (95% CI [0.06, 0.47]). This deficiency was particularly pronounced when participants were instructed to apply direct retrieval suppression mechanism. These results suggest that intact suppression-induced forgetting is a hallmark of psychological well-being, and that inducing more specific suppression mechanisms fosters voluntary forgetting.

Learning from errors can be a key 21st century competence, especially for informal learning where such metacognitive skills are a prerequisite. We investigate whether, how and when web-based interactive erroneous examples promote such competence, and increase understanding of fractions and learning outcomes. Erroneous examples present students with common errors or misconceptions. Three studies were conducted with students of different grade levels. We compared the cognitive, metacognitive, conceptual, and transfer learning outcomes of three conditions: a control condition (problem solving), a condition that learned with erroneous examples without help, and a condition that learned with erroneous examples with error detection and correction support. Our results indicate significant metacognitive learning gains of erroneous examples with help for 6th-graders. They also show cognitive and conceptual learning gains for 9th and 10th-graders when additional help is provided. No effects were found for 7th-graders. We discuss the implications of our findings for instructional design. D. Tsovaltzi et al.

Aversive events sometimes turn into intrusive memories. However, prior evidence indicates that such memories can be controlled via a mechanism of retrieval suppression. Here, we test the hypothesis that suppression exerts a sustained influence on memories by deteriorating their neural representations. This deterioration, in turn, would hinder their subsequent reactivation and thus impoverish the vividness with which they can be recalled. In an fMRI study, participants repeatedly suppressed memories of aversive scenes. As predicted, this process rendered the memories less vivid. Using a pattern classifier, we observed that suppression diminished the neural reactivation of scene information both globally across the brain and locally in the parahippocampal cortices. Moreover, the decline in vividness was associated with reduced reinstatement of unique memory representations in right parahippocampal cortex. These results support the hypothesis that suppression weakens memories by causing a sustained reduction in the potential to reactivate their neural representations.