Selective directed forgetting: Eliminating output order and demand characteristics explanations

Abstract

Previous research has shown that giving an instruction to forget part of a studied list of items impairs the subsequent retrieval of these items compared with those not cued to be forgotten. This selective directed forgetting (SDF) effect has been found with slightly different procedures and in adolescents and young adults. While recent research has suggested that executive control might underlie SDF, alternative explanations that rely on procedural issues still have not been investigated. Specifically, SDF might essentially reflect output interference from the items cued to be remembered, so that the earlier recalled items interfere with the later recalled items. The effect could also result from demand characteristics: Participants might withhold the to-be-forgotten items to comply with the experimenter’s implicit goals or might not be willing to engage in the effort of retrieving all studied information. The results from two experiments showed that (1) the to-be-forgotten items were less accessible and were not influenced by output interference from to-be-remembered items (Experiment 1), and (2) SDF was still present when participants were offered monetary reward for retrieving as many items as possible (Experiment 2). Hence, the findings do not provide support to explanations of SDF based on output interference and demand characteristics.