List-method directed forgetting: Do critical findings generalize from short to long retention intervals?

Abstract

AbstractPeople can purposefully forget information that has become irrelevant, as is demonstrated in list-method directed forgetting (LMDF). In this task, participants are cued to intentionally forget an already studied list (list 1) before encoding a second list (list 2); this induces forgetting of the first-list items. Most research on LMDF has been conducted with short retention intervals, but very recent studies indicate that such directed forgetting can be lasting. We examined in two experiments whether core findings in the LMDF literature generalize from short to long retention intervals. The focus of Experiment 1 was on the previous finding that, with short retention interval, list-2 encoding is necessary for list-1 forgetting to arise. Experiment 1 replicated the finding after a short delay of 3 min between study and test and extended it to a longer delay of 20 min. The focus of Experiment 1 was on the absence of list-1 forgetting in item recognition, previously observed after short retention interval. Experiment 1 replicated the finding after a short delay of 3 min between study and test and extended it to longer delays of 20 min and 24 h. Implications of the results for theoretical explanations of LMDF are discussed.