Selective intentional forgetting in adolescents with social anxiety disorder

Exploring Mechanisms of Selective Directed Forgetting

“…A SDF effect was also found by Gómez-Ariza et al (2013) in adolescents by using the Delaney et al’s (2009) procedure. Based on previous research indicating that anxiety entails reduced executive-control capacities (e.g., Bishop, 2009; Pacheco-Unguetti et al, 2010), Gómez-Ariza et al (2013) aimed to test if this deficit extends to the ability to forget no-longer relevant memories. Their results showed that whereas the healthy control group exhibited a SDF effect, a group diagnosed with social anxiety disorder failed to forget.…”

“…Hence, it seems odd that only some items from List 1 become forgotten after providing the cue. In contrast, the inhibitory view of LM-DF could in principle account for SDF (Delaney et al, 2009; Gómez-Ariza et al, 2013; Kliegl et al, 2013; Aguirre et al, 2014). As previously described, according to this view (Geiselman et al, 1983; Bjork, 1989, 1998; Conway et al, 2000; Bäuml et al, 2008; Hanslmayr et al, 2012; Anderson and Hanslmayr, 2014) an inhibitory mechanism would make the TBF items (the whole List 1 in a standard DF experiment) less accessible to awareness.…”

“…Some pieces of evidence suggest that successfully forget in the standard non-selective LM-DF procedure requires effortful control and draws on executive resources (Harnishfeger and Pope, 1996; Conway et al, 2000; Conway and Fthenaki, 2003; Soriano and Bajo, 2007; Bäuml et al, 2008; Hanslmayr et al, 2012). Similarly, it has been suggested that the ability to selectively intentionally forget taps on executive-control capacities (Gómez-Ariza et al, 2013). However, none of these issues have been directly investigated so far.…”

“…Usually updating of information is specific and selectively targeted to the information that is no longer relevant, so that the correct instructions and information are kept in mind to be able to successfully perform the intended task. However, while many studies have sought to investigate how people intentionally forget information in a non-selective way (e.g., Conway et al, 2000; Sahakyan and Kelley, 2002; Sahakyan and Delaney, 2003; Delaney et al, 2010; Hanslmayr et al, 2012; Abel and Bäuml, 2016; Pastötter et al, 2016; for reviews, see also Bjork, 1998; Sahakyan et al, 2013; Anderson and Hanslmayr, 2014), it is only recently that deliberate selective forgetting has been the subject of investigation (Delaney et al, 2009; Gómez-Ariza et al, 2013; Kliegl et al, 2013; Storm et al, 2013; Aguirre et al, 2014). …”

Adolescent Social Phobia in Clinical Services

“…Such events can be further complicated by cognitive factors; socially anxious children and teens have been found to be hypervigilant for threatening social-evaluative cues relative to their less anxious peers (Foa et al 1996 ;Lucock and Salkovskis 1988 ;Muris et al 2000 ). Socially anxious teens also demonstrate defi cits in executive control, such as fi nding it more diffi cult to eliminate no longer relevant material from memory in a directed forgetting task (Gomez-Ariza et al 2013 ). And, although interest in selective attention for threatening stimuli has become an area of hot research interest over the last decade, thus far no studies have examined adolescents for these biases (Higa-McMillan and Ebesutani 2011 ).…”