Direct Evidence for the Role of Inhibition in Resolving Interference in Memory

Healey, M. Karl; Campbell, Karen L.; Hasher, Lynn; Ossher, Lynn

doi:10.1177/0956797610382120

Cited by 53 publications

(83 citation statements)

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“…There is now ample evidence to suggest that successful memory retrieval involves inhibition of competing concepts in memory, rendering those concepts less active or accessible (e.g., Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994; Aslan & Bäuml, 2011; Healey, Campbell, Hasher, & Ossher, 2010; for a review, see Storm & Levy, 2012). For instance, in retrieval induced forgetting (RIF) paradigms, participants learn a list of category-exemplar pairs (e.g., FRUIT-apple), followed by a retrieval-practice phase during which some of the studied items are retrieved in response to partial cues (e.g., FRUIT-a____).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priming, not inhibition, of related concepts during future imagining

Campbell

Benoit

Schacter

2017

Memory

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Remembering the past and imagining the future both involve the retrieval of details stored in episodic memory and rely on the same core network of brain regions. Given these parallels, one might expect similar component processes to be involved in remembering and imagining. While a strong case can be made for the role of inhibition in memory retrieval, few studies have examined whether inhibition is also necessary for future imagining and results to-date have been mixed. In the current study, we test whether related concepts are inhibited during future imagining using a modified priming approach. Participants first generated a list of familiar places and for each place, the people they most strongly associate with it. A week later, participants imagined future events involving recombinations of people and places, immediately followed by a speeded response task in which participants made familiarity decisions about people’s names. Across two experiments, our results suggest that related concepts are not inhibited during future imagining, but rather are automatically primed. These results fit with recent work showing that autobiographically significant concepts (e.g., friends’ names) are more episodic than semantic in nature, automatically activating related details in memory and potentially fueling the flexible simulation of future events.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priming, not inhibition, of related concepts during future imagining

Campbell

Benoit

Schacter

2017

Memory

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“…In the baseline condition, participants merely read the words of Phase 3 with no prior exposure to them. Evidence of suppression by young adults was reported in Healey et al and can be seen in Figure 2: By contrast with the two control conditions (no-resolution and no-confiict), both of which showed priming of the competitor relative to baseline (Healey et al, 2010), words in the interference condition showed no priming. For young adults, resolving interference entailed suppressing the accessibility of the competitor words to a pre-exposure baseline.…”

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confidence: 70%

“…Note. For comparison purposes with Healey et al (2010), we excluded any participants who were aware of connections between the phases. In a second step we excluded any participants with too few valid trials.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The role of suppression in resolving interference: Evidence for an age-related deficit.

Healey

Hasher

Campbell

2013

Psychology and Aging

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Difficulty with memory retrieval is a salient feature of cognitive aging and may be related to a reduction in the ability to suppress items that compete for retrieval. To test this hypothesis directly, we presented a series of words for shallow coding that included pairs of orthographically similar words (e.g., ALLERGY and ANALOGY). After a delay, participants solved word fragments (e.g., A _ L _ _ GY) that resembled both words in a pair but could only be completed by one. We measured the consequence of having successfully resolved competition by having participants read a list of words including the rejected competitors as quickly as possible. Response time was compared with control conditions that did not require resolving competition. Older adults showed no evidence of suppression; instead they showed priming for the competitors, in sharp contrast to strong suppression effects previously observed in younger adults. Whereas previous studies have provided clear evidence for suppression deficits by examining the ability to produce targets in high interference situations, here we provide direct evidence for a suppression deficit by examining the accessibility of rejected competitors.

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“…Indeed, effects similar to retrieval-induced forgetting have been observed in almost any situation in which someone must attempt to retrieve or generate some specific subset of information while not retrieving or generating other information (e.g., Bäuml, 2002;Johnson & Anderson, 2004;Healey, Campbell, Hasher, & Ossher, 2010;Levy, McVeigh, Marful, & Anderson, 2007;Storm, Angello, & Bjork, 2011;Storm, Bjork, Bjork, & Nestojko, 2006;Storm & Patel, 2014).…”

Section: Retrieval-induced Forgettingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Explanation can cause Forgetting: Memory Dynamics in the Generation of New Arguments

Soares

Storm

2017

Psychon Bull Rev

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Retrieval-induced forgetting is observed when the retrieval of target information causes the forgetting of nontarget information. The present study investigated whether similar dynamics occur in the context of generating arguments in the process of explanation. Participants studied arguments associated with several issues before attempting to think of new arguments pertaining to a subset of those issues. When given a later memory test, participants were less likely to recall the studied arguments if they had attempted to think of new arguments than if they had not. This argument-induced forgetting effect was observed regardless of whether participants attempted to generate arguments that either agreed or disagreed with the position of the arguments they studied. The effect was significantly reduced, however, and even numerically reversed, when participants generated arguments that were highly related to the studied arguments. This finding fits well with previous research on retrieval-induced forgetting, which has shown that the retrieval or generation of new information fails to cause the forgetting of old information when the two types of information are well integrated or semantically associated.Keywords Argument generation . Retrieval-induced forgetting . Retrieval-induced facilitation . Inhibition . Integration It often is while explaining our opinions that we find ourselves questioning, developing, and strengthening them. We may learn, for example, that the arguments we generate are not as convincing as we expected or that they rest on assumptions that are no longer valid. Alternatively, we may discover additional arguments that provide newfound support for our position, leading us to give it even more credence in the future than we would have otherwise. Research on self-persuasion, for example, has shown that attempting to generate new arguments in favor of a position can make people more likely to agree with that position than they would have been had they simply been exposed to the same arguments instead (Cialdini & Petty, 1981;Janis & King, 1954;King & Janis, 1956). Similarly, generating explanations for why an event might occur or why a theory might be true can cause people to judge them to be more likely to occur or be true (Campbell & Fairey, 1985;Hirt & Sherman, 1985;Hoch, 1985;Sherman, Zehner, Johnson, & Hirt, 1983).In the context of memory, the generation of new arguments and explanatory stances can enhance a person's ability to remember relevant information (Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glaser, 1989;Chi, De Leeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher, 1994;Crowley & Siegler, 1999;Murphy & Allopenna, 1994;Renkl, 1997;Rittle-Johnson, 2006;Ryoo & Linn 2012). When participants generate arguments or self-explanations related to categories or scientific phenomena, for example, they often remember relevant concepts better than they would have otherwise. Such consequences seem particularly tied to the way arguments and explanations are generated. Specifically, generations that involve referencing and elaborating...

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Direct Evidence for the Role of Inhibition in Resolving Interference in Memory

Cited by 53 publications

References 30 publications

Priming, not inhibition, of related concepts during future imagining

Priming, not inhibition, of related concepts during future imagining

The role of suppression in resolving interference: Evidence for an age-related deficit.

Explanation can cause Forgetting: Memory Dynamics in the Generation of New Arguments

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