Abstract
The aim of the present research was to examine the relationship between individual differences in thought suppression and retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) in witness-like situations. We predicted that people who are more prone to suppress undesired thoughts and memories would demonstrate a stronger RIF effect. Consistent with findings obtained in a US sample (Blumberg in Personal Individ Differ 29:943–950, 2000), results of a preliminary study (Study 1) confirmed the three-factor structure of the white bear suppression inventory (WBSI): the tendency to rely on thought suppression (suppression dimension), the frequency of experiencing intrusive thoughts (intrusion dimension), and the frequency of using self-distraction to avoid undesired thoughts (self-distraction dimension). Consistent with our hypotheses, Study 2 found that only the suppression sub-dimension of the WBSI was positively and significantly related to RIF. Theoretical expectations of these findings and implications for witness research are discussed.
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Notes
Although Bergström et al. (2009) found an interference-based forgetting effect produced by thought substitution strategy, the authors point out that, where competition among the items is strong, thought substitution may also require a lateral-inhibitory mechanism in order to decrease such a competition and stop the intrusion of the unwanted memories.
The materials and the cues given during study, retrieval-practice and final recall test were entirely verbal.
This lack of the relationship between thought suppression and retrieval success might seem surprising to some, because one might expect inhibitory control to improve practice success. However, Craik et al. (2000) found that dividing attention has a slight effect on recall performance. Furthermore, there is evidence on how dividing attention actually impairs RIF, but not retrieval success in the retrieval-practice paradigm (Román et al., 2009). These findings seem suggest that under low attentional resources, retrieval speed is reduced, but retrieval success is not impaired. Thus, the availability of attentional resources seems to improve the retrieval speed, but not the retrieval success (Craik et al., 1996).
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Pica, G., Pierro, A. & Giannini, A. The relationship between thought suppression and retrieval-induced forgetting: an analysis of witness memories. Cogn Process 16, 35–44 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-014-0626-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-014-0626-0