Intentional Forgetting: Current Status and Future Prospects of Research

Background. Classical psychology has considered forgetting as a negative process of failure of memorization and extraction, but did not deem it a separate mental process with specific features. The pioneer studies of intentional forgetting were conducted only in the late 1960s. Therefore, it seems to us relevant to present an analysis of the research methods that have been used to study purposeful forgetting. The Objective is to analyze thoroughly intentional forgetting in modern cognitive psychology and to justify the assumption that the productive development of intentional forgetting issues should be associated with the priority attention to the regulating function of the mnemonic goal and its structure. A hypothesis lies in the fact that a particular operation of the mnemonic action of forgetting consists in disconnecting the content links between the constituent mnemonic elements made during memorizing process. Design. Two of the most common experimental procedures for inducing the effect of reducing the reproduction of stimulus material after the «Forget» instruction are described: the item method and the list method. The results show four ways of interpreting the intentional forgetting effect: the aspirations of the subjects to meet the experimenter’s expectations, selective encoding and selective processing of the material presented, the mechanism of active «retrieval inhibition» and eliminating the mnemonic trace. The concept of mnemonic action introduced in the works of P.I. Zinchenko and the concept of the mnemonic scheme as a program for the subsequent reproduction of V.Ya. Lyaudis are considered. The Research Results suggest that when trying to perform an inadequate mnemonic query, the subject is forced to implement an additional operation, which may be attributed to potential forgetting operations. The development of this hypothesis consists in the theoretical description of operations that destroy the existing mnemonic scheme, followed by an empirical test of their amnesogenic effectiveness. Such an approach can be used in further studies of intentional forgetting. Conclusion. Encoding and processing of mnemonic material, extraction, and the mechanism for inhibited reproduction play a role in shaping the effect of intentional forgetting. Considering the fact that the mnemonic trace can fade over time or for other reasons, forgetting is deemed as a multifaceted process. Prospects for the development of this subject area should be conducted using the mnemonic construct

Collective remembering and future forecasting during the COVID-19 pandemic: How the impact of COVID-19 affected the themes and phenomenology of global and national memories across 15 countries

The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances in which to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June 2020, we asked over 4,000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) had happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expected to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating to its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it was occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic, and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed

Compressed Life Review: Extreme Manifestation of Autobiographical Memory in Eye-Tracker

The compressed life review (CLR) is a mnemonic illusion of having “your entire life flashing before your eyes”. This research was guided by concerns over the retrospective methodology used in CLR studies. To depart from this methodology, I considered the long-term working memory (WM), “concentric”, and “activation-based” models of memory. A novel theoretically rooted laboratory-based experimental technique aimed to elicit the CLR-like experience with no risk to healthy participants was developed. It consists of listening to superimposed audio recordings of previously trained verbal cues to an individually composed set of self-defining memories (SDMs). The technique evoked a self-reported CLR-like experience in 10 out of 20 participants. A significant similarity in eye movement patterns between a single SDM condition and a choir of SDM conditions in self-reported CLR experiencers was confirmed. In both conditions, stimuli caused relative visual immobilization, in contrast to listening to a single neutral phrase, and a choir of neutral phrases that led to active visual exploration. The data suggest that CLR-like phenomenology may be successfully induced by triggering short-term access to the verbally cued SDMs and may be associated with specific patterns of visual activity that are not reportedly involved with deliberate autobiographical retrieval

To forget or not to forget: mnemonic “renunciation” effect and the subjective evaluation of the truth of autobiographical memories

Identifying patterns of influence deliberate lie on deferred confidence of reliability of autobiographical memories is current problem for legal psychology. We reviewed the variability of autobiographical memories in the context of legal practice. In addition, we conducted the experimental field study of the dynamics of subjective assessments of the reliability of memories. It was found that truthful confirmation and false refutation of reliable last episodes, as well as after a truthful refutation and false confirmation of unreliable last episodes lead to regular changes in the subjective assessment of the reliability. The mnemonic "renunciation effect" is that a false refutation of a reliable episode leads to its forgetting and a truthful refutation of an unreliable episode leads to its erroneous inclusion in autobiographical memory

The power of imagination / The weakness of dating: on two origins of autobiographical memory distortion

The article focuses on issues of autobiographical memory malleability which are of high relevance to forensic practice. Taking into account both single case report and mass studies we revealed that time is the weakest aspect of autobiographical recollection. Namely, dating of past event and ordering of event components are prone to memory distortion to the maximum extent. Paradoxically, it coincides with high confidence in accuracy of event recalled. Than we shifted to the most discussed in the relevant literature mechanism of memory transformation i.e. imagination inflation. This mechanism consists of mistaking just imagined event for a real one. We also noted that high subjective probability of imagined event and reliable source of misinformation make significant impact into memory transformation

Forgetting: the availability, accessibility, and intentional control problem. Part 2

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of forgetting as a primal and generally productive memory process. The cases that require temporary and permanent forgetting of the data stored in the long-term memory are contrasted. The main methodological obstacle in forgetting research is identified as arising from the logical prohibition to argument from the negative, i.e. “the evidence of absence is not the evidence of absence”. Two mechanisms of forgetting are discussed in the paper: transformation of the memory trace and modulation of trace accessibility. The former mechanism of forgetting consists of memory trace destruction (memory trace decay, retroactive and proactive interference, and «catastrophic» interference) or its transformation that leads to forming a new memory representation. The most promising way to legitimize the trace destruction mechanism is narrowing the further research to episodic memory subsystem. The latter mechanism of forgetting consists of both passive failure in access to appropriate memory content (the tip of the tongue phenomenon, the category size effect, the fan effect) and the process of active retrieval inhibition. This phenomenon represents temporary inhibition of competing semantically similar responses in semantic memory, and motivational inhibition of self-deprecating memories in autobiographical memory. Thus, a variety of experimental paradigms in intentional forgetting research are considered. Contrary to the common claim that forgetting is а universal and homogeneous phenomenon, we propose that forgetting strategies might vary in different memory subsystems, and also depend on activity characteristics during encoding, storage and retrieval

Deliberately Retrieved Negative Memories Can Improve Mood Beyond the Intention to Do So

The role of autobiographical memory in emotion regulation is deemed as limited to the selective retrieval of positive memories intended as a distraction from unpleasant stimuli. The present experimental study is the first to examine whether negative autobiographical memories serve as a way to boost one’s mood by employing the mechanism of retrospective downward autobiographical comparison between now and then. We hypothesised that this mechanism may operate in response to negative memories, leading to positive mood induction. Ninety-nine students participated in four memory tasks: autobiographical positive, autobiographical negative, vicarious positive, and vicarious negative. Emotional states at pre- and post-tests were assessed using the implicit test differentiating positive (PA) and negative (NA) components of mood. The results replicated previous studies on the mood-repair effect of deliberate positive recall. The most striking finding is that negative autobiographical recall consistently boosted PA and inhibited NA. This result supported the idea of retrospective downward autobiographical comparison as a plausible mechanism behind the efficacy of negative memories in emotion regulation

Forgetting: availability, accessibility, and intentional control problem

The paper focuses on the phenomenon of forgetting as a primal and generally productive memory process. The cases that require a temporary and permanent forgetting of the material stored in the long-term memory are contrasted. The main methodological obstacle in forgetting research is identified as arising from the logical prohibition to argument from the negative, i.e. “the evidence of absence is not the evidence of absence”. Two mechanisms of forgetting are discussed in the paper: transformation of the memory trace and modulation of trace accessibility. The former mechanism of forgetting consists of memory trace destruction (memory trace decay, retroactive and proactive interference, and «catastrophic» interference) or its transformation that leads to forming a new memory representation. We speculate that the most promising way to legitimize the trace destruction mechanism is narrowing the further research to episodic memory subsystem. The latter mechanism of forgetting consists of both passive failure in access to appropriate memory content (the tip of the tongue phenomenon, the category size effect, the fan effect) and the process of active retrieval inhibition. This phenomenon represents temporary inhibition of competing semantically similar responses in semantic memory, and motivational inhibition of self-deprecating memories in autobiographical memory. Then we put into consideration a variety of experimental paradigms in intentional forgetting research. Contrary to the common claim that forgetting is а universal and homogeneous phenomenon, we propose that forgetting strategies might vary in different memory subsystems, and also depend on activity characteristics during encoding, storage and retrieval

On the Very-Long-Term Effect of Managing One’s Own Memory: The Intention to Forget Improves Recognition After a Year’s Delay

While such factors as demand characteristics, encoding, and retrieval inhibition were shown to be significant in producing the directed forgetting effect, no attention was paid to whether the intention to manage one’s own memory, per se, matters. In the present article, we addressed this important gap in the literature. To control the quality of encoding we ensured that both the to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items were genuinely learned before the manipulation. We used extremely long delays between the memory instructions and testing to release inhibition associated with the content of instructions. 98 participants demonstrated flawless recall of 12 Russian - made up language word pairs. They then viewed each Russian word from a pair once, with randomized instructions “Forget”, “Remember”, “Repeat”, or a short cognitive task. Self-reports on the mnemonic strategies were collected. Free recall and recognition tests were administered three times - 45 minutes, a month and a year (N = 58) later. Despite a strong incentive to recall all word pairs, fewer TBF pairs were recalled in comparison with TBR pairs, both after 45 minutes and after one month’s delay. Recognition among all conditions was equally high. A year later free recall was close to zero. In contrast, the TBR and TBF pairs were recognized equally better than pairs presented in “Repeat” and “Task” conditions. Thus, our results show that the intention to manage one’s own memory enhances the accessibility of memories at a very long time delay, no matter what type of instruction is issued