Intentional Forgetting Diminshes the Likelihood of Semantic Encoding in the Item-method Paradigm

Abstract

The aim of the current study was to determine whether differences in the nature of encoding that underlies to-be-remembered (TBR) vs. to-be-forgotten (TBF) items are responsible for the disparity in the quality of their memory traces. In separate experiments, the study phase of an item-method directed forgetting paradigm was followed by a recognition memory test in which previously studied words were mixed with foils of two types: 1) unrelated foils that had no explicit relation to studied TBR or TBF words and 2) similar foils that either sounded similar (Experiment 1), were visually similar (Experiment 2) or had a similar meaning (Experiment 3) to a studied word. An analysis of similar foil false alarm rates showed that while TBR and TBF words are equally likely to be represented in memory in terms of their acoustic and visual properties, meaning is more likely to be encoded following an intention to remember.