In an event-method directed forgetting task, instructions to remember (R) or forget (F) were integrated throughout the presentation of four videos depicting common events (e.g., baking cookies). In a concurrent-instruction paradigm (Experiments 1-5) participants were instructed to remember (R) anything presented when the video border was green and to forget (F) anything presented when the video border was purple. In a post-instruction paradigm (Experiments 6-10) participants were instructed to remember anything preceding a green circle and to forget anything preceding a purple circle. The R or F segments lasted 35 s and were randomly assigned such that each video always contained 4 R and 4 F segments. Participants responded more accurately to cued-recall questions (Experiments 1 and 6) and true-false statements (Experiments 2-5 and 7-10) regarding R segments than F segments although this difference was found only for relatively specific (the woman added 3 cups of flour) as opposed to general (the woman added flour) information (Experiments 5 and 7-10). Participants retain a general representation of the events they intend to forget – even though this representation is not as specific as the representation of events they intend to remember. At encoding, participants were faster to discriminate targets overlaid upon F segments compared to R segments in the concurrent-instruction paradigm (Experiment 3) but were slower to detect targets presented following F compared to R instructions in the post-instruction paradigm (Experiments 6-7 and 9-10). Therefore, whereas both concurrent- and post-instruction paradigms produced comparable effects on subsequent mnemonic performance, the underlying processes are not identical. In the concurrent-instruction paradigm, participants needed to control access to working memory; in the post-instruction paradigm, participants needed to control the contents of working memory. In the former case, we expect that participants minimized processing of F segments while actively rehearsing R segments. In the latter case, we expect that participants engaged one or more active mechanisms associated with the removal of processing resources from the representation of the F segments (functionally terminating rehearsal) while focusing instead on the elaborative rehearsal of the R segments.

The current thesis explored the intentional forgetting of different types of facial expression (Angry, Neutral, Happy) within the item-method directed forgetting paradigm (Experiments 1-4). Also, as a manipulation check, Experiment 5 obtained the subjective ratings of valence and arousal for the different types of facial expression used in the previous four Experiments. In summary, a significant directed forgetting effect occurred for Neutral facial expressions; however, a significant directed forgetting effect did not consistently occur for emotional facial expressions (e.g., there was no directed forgetting effect for Angry facial expressions in Experiments 2 and 3, or Happy facial expressions in Experiment 3). These findings are discussed in terms of encoding time as well as valence and arousal, and how these two factors modulate the effect of emotional facial expression on the ability to intentionally forget.

In this experiment it was investigated how scent affect the memory. Encoding information in the same context as retrieving it has been suggested to be beneficial for memory, earlier research has mostly explored how environmental contextual cues affects the memory. In this research the contextual cue was created by a presentation of a scent. The participants were presented with two lists of words, during the encoding of the first list all the participants were presented with a scent, half of the group was directed to forget the first list straight after encoding and the other half to keep remembering the list. For the second list no one was presented with a scent. In the retrieval of both lists half of each group was reinstated with the scent they were presented with at encoding and the other half without the scent (control group). The data were analysed with univariate ANOVAs and significant effects were followed up with independent-samples t-test. The results were that participants that were reinstated with the scent were thought to remember more than the others, however there was only a significant difference in the forget condition with reinstatement, where they remembered less than in the other conditions.

<p>In directed forgetting research, participants are instructed to forget information recently learned, and asked instead to remember new information given later. When asked to recall both the to-be-remembered and the to-be-forgotten information, participants successfully exhibit directed forgetting by recalling more to-be-remembered material, than to-be-forgotten material. In the present study, two directed forgetting list method experiments were conducted on undergraduate students of psychology (n = 25; n = 78). The aim of the study was to see if retrieval inhibition between participants with or without traumatic childhood experiences differed, when presented with negative or positive words. All participants were screened for childhood trauma with the CTQ-SF. The participants in the second experiment were additionally screened for dissociation with the DES-II. While Experiment 1, possibly due to small sample size failed to attain a directed forgetting effect, Experiment 2 succeeded. The issue of childhood trauma did not influence the directed forgetting effect.</p>

In directed forgetting research, participants are instructed to forget information recently learned, and asked instead to remember new information given later. When asked to recall both the to-be-remembered and the to-be-forgotten information, participants successfully exhibit directed forgetting by recalling more to-be-remembered material, than to-be-forgotten material. In the present study, two directed forgetting list method experiments were conducted on undergraduate students of psychology (n = 25; n = 78). The aim of the study was to see if retrieval inhibition between participants with or without traumatic childhood experiences differed, when presented with negative or positive words. All participants were screened for childhood trauma with the CTQ-SF. The participants in the second experiment were additionally screened for dissociation with the DES-II. While Experiment 1, possibly due to small sample size failed to attain a directed forgetting effect, Experiment 2 succeeded. The issue of childhood trauma did not influence the directed forgetting effect.

Nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) is a behavior recently added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as a condition for further study. In this dissertation, I present findings from three studies that inform the clinical description of NSSI as well as some of the cognitive and emotional aspects of NSSI. In Study 1, I examined data from a community sample of adult women who met proposed DSM-5 criteria for NSSI or subthreshold NSSI. The findings show that any experience with NSSI is associated with significant impairment. Further, they suggest that greater self-criticism may be a key variable capable of distinguishing between people who engage in more versus less frequent NSSI. In Study 2, I examined the extent to which cognitive deficits in inhibiting emotional information may characterize people who engage in NSSI. Although NSSI participants endorsed greater difficulty with negative thoughts relative to controls, the groups demonstrated no differences on a directed forgetting task. These findings are consistent with previous research on emotional reactivity and impulsivity in NSSI that shows a similar dissociation between self-report and behavioral-based results. In Study 3, I examined how people process NSSI images. Results suggest that people who engage in NSSI view NSSI stimuli as relatively non-aversive. This is in sharp contrast to healthy controls, who consider NSSI images as highly aversive. These finding are consistent with models of NSSI that regard self-injury as providing reinforcement (positive and negative). Overall, the findings from these studies add to the clinical description of NSSI and support its diagnostic validity. Our examination of the clinical characteristics of the NSSI as described in DSM-5 highlights the importance of assessing the presence of any NSSI behavior as well as highly self-critical thoughts. Importantly, we found no evidence of memory deficits in NSSI. Of great clinical concern, however, is the extent to which engaging in NSSI appears to erode the aversive nature of NSSI stimuli. Taken together, our findings support a model in which self-criticism may reduce the initial barriers to engaging in NSSI, with the mood benefits associated with NSSI subsequently serving to maintain it. / Psychology

The present study set out to evaluate the relationship between list-method directed forgetting and one’s individual differences. Previous research has found personality and emotion as having an influence in how well participants were able to intentionally forget stimuli. Participants were split into a remember group and a forget group of 22 each and tasked to memorize a list of 10 words. They were then given a free recall test and the results for individual differences such as Need for Cognition, Mini-IPIP personality test, and Beck’s Depression Inventory were analyzed. Our first hypothesis presumes that participants in the forget group will have impaired recall of words. The second hypothesis predicts that individual differences have an effect with how many words participants recall. Results in this study indicated that while individual measures proved not significant between both groups, overall recall for the first list was lower than recall for the second list. There were also indications of an interaction between amount recalled from lists and whether they were in the remember group or in the forget group. Analyses showed that remember group had a recall mean similar in lists 1 and list 2, while the forget group had a higher recall mean in list 2 and a lower recall mean in the list 1, indicating that directed forgetting had taken place in the forget group.

本研究主要目的在於運用指示遺忘作業探討高社交焦慮者是否有記憶偏誤現象。高社交焦慮組24人與低社交焦慮組20人參與正式實驗，受試者被要求依據指示記住或忘記三種類型刺激詞（社交威脅、中性、社交正向）。作業結果未發現任何顯著之組間差異，但進一步分析發現，在指示記住項目的回憶上，所有受試者皆回憶出較多的社交正向詞（相對於中性詞以及社交威脅詞），顯示記憶的正向偏誤，然而，在指示忘記項目的回憶上，正向偏誤的現象僅出現在低社交焦慮組，不見於高社交焦慮組。此外，相關分析顯示，高社交焦慮組的FNE量表（Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale）得分與指示記住的社交正向詞回憶量成正相關，與指示忘記的社交威脅詞回憶量成負相關；低社交焦慮組的FNE量表得分與指示記住的社交正向詞回憶量成負相關。這些結果顯示高社交焦慮者可能缺乏正向偏誤的保護機制，較一般人更容易遺忘正向評價訊息，因而更容易受到負面評價的影響，於是他們傾向抑制負向評價訊息的回憶，將注意力投注在非威脅訊息，並努力記住正向評價，換言之，他們透過逃避負面評價的方式來維持良好的自我形象。 / The purpose of the present study was to utilize the directed forgetting task to investigate the memory bias in socially anxious individuals. Performance on a directed forgetting task was assessed in socially anxious (n=24) and nonanxious (n=20) individuals. Participants were presented with three types of words (negative social, neutral, positive social) and were cued to either remember or forget each word as it was presented. There were no between-groups differences on a free recall task for words in both remember and forget conditions. Follow-up analyses demonstrated that all subjects recalled more positive social words than either neutral words or negative social words in the remember condition, revealing the positive memory bias. However, only nonanxious individuals showed such positive memory bias in the forget condition, while high-social-anxiety individuals did not. Moreover, in the social anxiety group, the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE) scores were positively related to the recall of positive social “to-be-remembered” words, and negatively related to the recall of negative social “to-be-forgotten” words. In the control group, FNE scores were negatively related to the recall of positive social “to-be-remembered” words. These results suggest that the protective positive bias was absent in socially anxious individuals. Thus, they were more likely than nonanxious individuals to forget positive evaluative information; therefore, they were vulnerable to negative evaluation. Furthermore, people with excessive social anxiety might try hard to inhibit the recall of negative evaluation and to remember positive evaluation. In other words, they made an effort to maintain a good impression by avoiding negative evaluative information.

<p>This thesis presents four studies investigating (1) whether incidentally primed control-related words can attenuate the impact of activated stereotypes on subsequent evaluation of a target person, (2) the impact of motivated forgetting on the recall of stereotypically congruent and incongruent information, and (3) the impact of a directed forgetting instruction on the false recall and recognition of nonpresented stereotypical information.</p><p>In three experiments, Study I showed that participants initially primed with the social category, <i>immigrant, </i>and subsequently primed with words that were evocative of control or self-control made less negative impression of a target displaying ambiguous behaviors than participants not exposed to such words.</p><p>Study II, using a directed-forgetting paradigm, demonstrated in two experiments that participants subliminally primed with Swedish facial photographs who later studied stereotypically incongruent words roughly recalled an equal number of items regardless of the forget or remember instructions. </p><p>Study III showed that participants primed with the social category, <i>immigrant</i> and then studied a list of stereotypically related and unrelated words falsely recognized more nonpresented stereotypical words when they were furnished with a forget than a remember instruction. Similarly, Study IV (Experiment 2) demonstrated that participants primed with the social category, <i>immigrant</i>, but not with a neutral category, falsely recalled more nonpresented stereotypical words when their cognitive capacity was depleted through a concurrent memory load task. </p><p>The thesis presents a review and a discussion of some of the theoretical underpinnings of the extant literature on stereotyping and intergroup relations and of the social implications of the present findings.</p>

This thesis presents four studies investigating (1) whether incidentally primed control-related words can attenuate the impact of activated stereotypes on subsequent evaluation of a target person, (2) the impact of motivated forgetting on the recall of stereotypically congruent and incongruent information, and (3) the impact of a directed forgetting instruction on the false recall and recognition of nonpresented stereotypical information. In three experiments, Study I showed that participants initially primed with the social category, immigrant, and subsequently primed with words that were evocative of control or self-control made less negative impression of a target displaying ambiguous behaviors than participants not exposed to such words. Study II, using a directed-forgetting paradigm, demonstrated in two experiments that participants subliminally primed with Swedish facial photographs who later studied stereotypically incongruent words roughly recalled an equal number of items regardless of the forget or remember instructions. Study III showed that participants primed with the social category, immigrant and then studied a list of stereotypically related and unrelated words falsely recognized more nonpresented stereotypical words when they were furnished with a forget than a remember instruction. Similarly, Study IV (Experiment 2) demonstrated that participants primed with the social category, immigrant, but not with a neutral category, falsely recalled more nonpresented stereotypical words when their cognitive capacity was depleted through a concurrent memory load task. The thesis presents a review and a discussion of some of the theoretical underpinnings of the extant literature on stereotyping and intergroup relations and of the social implications of the present findings.