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Two stages of directed forgetting: Electrophysiological evidence from a short‐term memory task
Author(s) -
Gao Heming,
Cao Bihua,
Qi Mingming,
Wang Jing,
Zhang Qi,
Li Fuhong
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/psyp.12628
Subject(s) - forgetting , psychology , motivated forgetting , retrieval induced forgetting , task (project management) , cognitive psychology , audiology , developmental psychology , medicine , management , economics
In this study, a short‐term memory test was used to investigate the temporal course and neural mechanism of directed forgetting under different memory loads. Within each trial, two memory items with high or low load were presented sequentially, followed by a cue indicating whether the presented items should be remembered. After an interval, subjects were asked to respond to the probe stimuli. The ERPs locked to the cues showed that (a) the effect of cue type was initially observed during the P2 (160–240 ms) time window, with more positive ERPs for remembering relative to forgetting cues; (b) load effects were observed during the N2‐P3 (250–500 ms) time window, with more positive ERPs for the high‐load than low‐load condition; (c) the cue effect was also observed during the N2‐P3 time window, with more negative ERPs for forgetting versus remembering cues. These results demonstrated that directed forgetting involves two stages: task‐relevance identification and information discarding. The cue effects during the N2 epoch supported the view that directed forgetting is an active process.