Determinants of induced amnesia in short-term memory.

Abstract

In two experiments, 5s were required to free recall lists of line drawings of common objects. Some of the lists contained a critical item, a photograph of nudes, in place of the middle item. In addition, instructions regarding rehearsal, rate of presentation of list items, and exposure duration of the critical item were varied. The critical item produced' a von Restorff effect accompanied by substantial anterograde and retrograde induced amnesia. Instructions minimizing rehearsal had no effect on retrograde amnesia, but increased anterograde amnesia. Faster rates of presentation increased only anterograde amnesia while longer exposure durations of the critical item increased only retrograde amnesia. These results were interpreted as suggesting separate causal factors for retrograde and anterograde amnesia. Retrograde amnesia seemed best explained in terms of retrieval failure and anterograde amnesia in terms of encoding failure.

Arousal-enhanced location memory for pictures

“…These typically either involve sequences with just one arousing item (Hurlemann et al, 2005;Strange et al, 2003;Schmidt, 2002;Erdelyi & Blumenthal, 1973;Detterman & Ellis, 1972;Ellis et al, 1971;Runcie & O'Bannon, 1977;MacKay et al, 2004) or rapid serial visual presentation without responses required from the participants until the end of the list (Hadley & MacKay, 2006). The current findings suggest that this type of arousal-based interference seen for item memory will not extend to item-location conjunction memory.…”

“…A number of studies have shown that arousing stimuli can interfere with memory for spatially or temporally nearby neutral items (Bornstein, Liebel, & Scarberry, 1998;Detterman & Ellis, 1972;Ellis et al, 1971;Erdelyi & Blumenthal, 1973;Hadley & MacKay, 2006;Hurlemann et al, 2005;Johnson et al, 2005;MacKay et al, 2004;Miu, Heilman, Opre, & Miclea, 2005;Runcie & O'Bannon, 1977;Schmidt, 2002;Strange, Hurlemann, & Dolan, 2003). Although some of these studies used very rapid presentation, item memory impairment for temporally adjacent items also has been found with up to three or four seconds between the arousing and neutral items (Detterman & Ellis, 1972;Hurlemann et al, 2005;Runcie & O'Bannon, 1977) and sometimes even for items appearing six seconds after an arousing item (Schmidt, 2002). However, memory for contextual information was not tested in any of these studies, so it is not clear whether interference from adjacent emotionally arousing items also impairs binding of contextual features to neutral items.…”

Functional amnesia as induced by a psychological trauma

“…Requestsfor reprints should be sent to Sven-Ake Christianson, Department of Psychology, University of Umea, S-90247 Urnea, Sweden. 1973, Detterman, 1976, Detterman & Ellis, 1972, Ellis, Detterman, Runcie, McCarver, & Craig, 1971, and Tulving, 1969. Second, the critical event usually employed in the laboratory to induce amnesia is not really a traumatic event.…”

On the locus of the Tulving retrograde amnesia effect

“…No decrease in recall of the immediately following item (IFI) to the HPI was observed, which was offered as additional support for his assumptions. Detterman and Ellis (1972) found that instructions to minimize rehearsal had no effect on retrograde amnesia. In addition, longer durations of the HPI increased the observed retrograde amnesia.…”

“…Saufley and Winograd (1970) demonstrated the same results without giving subjects special instruction to remember the critical item. Detterman and Ellis (1972) and Ellis, Detterman, Runcie, McCarver, and Craig (1971) showed that a von Restorff effect and retrograde amnesia could be produced in a somewhat different manner. Photographs of nude males and females were placed within lists of common line drawings.…”