Motivated Forgetting and Memory Control

Vocabulary flashcards covering motivated forgetting, experimental paradigms (item-method, list-method, think/no-think), cognitive theories, neural substrates, recovered memories, and psychogenic amnesia.

Motivated forgetting

The concept that forgetting can be deliberate rather than accidental, motivated either because information is obsolete and creates interference, or because the memory is emotionally distressing.

Encoding problem

A failure of memory where information was only weakly learned during initial exposure, rather than being forgotten after storage.

Storage problem

A failure of memory where information was successfully learned, but the physical memory trace deteriorated through decay or interference from other traces.

Retrieval problem

A failure of memory where the memory trace remains intact within storage, but cannot be readily accessed.

Item-method directed forgetting

A laboratory paradigm demonstrating voluntary control over encoding, in which participants are instructed to remember or forget each individual item immediately after it is presented.

List-method directed forgetting

A laboratory paradigm demonstrating retrieval control, in which participants study a complete list, receive a mid-experiment cue to forget that list, and study a second list; this results in impaired recall of the first list despite intact recognition and indirect priming.

Pure inhibition theory

The account of directed forgetting proposing that participants intentionally and actively suppress the retrieval strength of to-be-forgotten memory traces.

Context-shift theory

The account of directed forgetting proposing that participants segregate to-be-forgotten and to-be-remembered items into separate mental contexts, later restricting retrieval searches solely to the to-be-remembered context.

Think/no-think (TNT) paradigm

An experimental procedure developed by Anderson where participants repeatedly practice either retrieving the target of a word pair upon seeing its cue (Think) or intentionally preventing the target from entering awareness (No-think).

Independent probe test

A test in the think/no-think paradigm using a novel semantic cue and letter stem (such as $INSECT-R\_\_\_\_$ for $ROACH$) to determine whether suppression practice inhibits the memory of the target item itself rather than just the learned pair association.

Neural substrates of think/no-think

Brain patterns during memory suppression (no-think trials) showing increased activation in the prefrontal cortex (control area) and decreased activation in the hippocampus (memory area).

Repression

A psychoanalytic concept defined as deliberately making an unpleasant memory inaccessible while simultaneously forgetting the act of suppression itself.

Corroboration rates (Geraerts et al., 2007)

Independent verification of abuse memories via records or witnesses, identified in $45\%$ of continuous memory cases, $37\%$ of spontaneous recovery cases, and $0\%$ of suggestive therapy cases.

Psychogenic amnesia

A form of non-organic memory loss typically triggered by severe emotional stress, where an individual forgets personal semantic identity and memories from the fugue episode, while anterograde learning and public knowledge remain intact.

Fugue time

The period of weeks or months during which a person with psychogenic amnesia wanders away from home; memories from this interval typically do not return even after the individual's prior personal identity is recovered.