Inhibition, Contextual Segregation, and Subject Strategies in List Method Directed Forgetting

Can encoding differences explain the benefits of directed forgetting in the list method paradigm?

“…Although the costs of directed forgetting are consistently found in directed forgetting studies irrespective of sample size, the benefits have not always achieved significance, even though the means were in the predicted direction (e.g., Conway, Harries, Noyes, Racsma'ny, & Frankish, 2000, Exp 1;Whetstone, Cross, & Whetstone, 1996). Both studies cited here that did not find significant benefits had smaller sample sizes than were used in similar studies successfully detecting the directed forgetting benefits.…”

“…1;Geiselman et al, 1983, Exp. 3;Whetstone et al, 1996), and even sometimes being larger than the costs (Geiselman et al, 1983, Exp. 2, Exp.…”

Control of access to memory: The use of task interference as a behavioral probe

“…In Experiment 2, the test instructions informed all participants to respond to both lists during the lexical decision task. Half of the participants were also told that they would be required to discriminate list membership (respond-all-discriminate; Whetstone, Cross, & Whetstone, 1996), while the other half were not given this additional requirement (respond-all). The reason for choosing this specific manipulation is that the respond-all-discriminate condition gives us a direct measure of list discrimination.…”

Alexithymia impairs the cognitive control of negative material while facilitating the recall of neutral material in both younger and older adults

“…Thus, it examines the ability to "control the contents of consciousness" (Whetstone, Cross, & Whetstone, 1996). Two methods are commonly used (Basden & Basden, 1996;Basden, Basden, & Gargano, 1993;MacLeod, 1998MacLeod, , 1999: (1) the item-by-item cueing method (i.e., word method), which tends to induce rehearsal mechanisms during encoding and (2) the list cueing method (i.e., list method), where "forget" instructions are provided after the first half of the list and "remember" instructions occur after the second half, which requires a specific effort to forget and/or control for context changes.…”