Effects And Properties Of Self-Reference Processing On Directed Forgetting

Self is the mental representation on their own personality, social role, past experience, future goals, for the life of great significance(Zhong YP, 2012). The previous research found that when a stimulus or event associated with self, people will have a faster response and better memory of it, namely "self reference effect"(Self-Reference Effect, SRE), the relationship between self and memory is validated by experiment on. At the same time, studies have found that the degree of effect and self related information, that the degree of processing caused by different degrees of self relationship will be different(fan; 2013). In recent years, researchers have begun to pay attention to memory of facade- forgotten, forgotten that for people’s survival is very important. The research also shows that people will forget the relevant information with its own initiative, so people for different degrees of relationship between self forgetting information whether there will be the effect? In addition to emotional stimuli can affect people forget, but too often to study between emotional stimuli and self forgetfulness and three less. The purpose of this study was to investigate through two experiments, self referential processing of intentional forgetting, and to further explore the role of valence.An experiment using 3x2 within subjects design. A total of 58 subjects participated in the experiment. According to the list method and R/K paradigm to examine the different degrees of self referential processing of neutral words to stimulate the intentional forgetting effect, the participants in the self reference and reference conditions of neutral words to stimulate the performance of the father was intentional forgetting, but Mo Yan did not appear in reference under the condition of intentional forgetting.Experiment two used 3X2X2 within subjects design. A total of 38 subjects participated in the experiment. To further examine the different degree of self referential processing of emotional words to stimulate the intentional forgetting effect, the participants according to conditions in the self reference and father to positive and neutral words to stimulate showed significant intentional forgetting, but self reference condition stimulation of negative words did not show obvious intentional forgetting.These results indicate that the self referential processing to promote the individual positive and neutral words to stimulate the intentional forgetting, and the promoting effect also showed a typical "self reference, but the degree of effect of negative words to stimulate the intentional forgetting has no effect, or even individual can not take the initiative to forget the negative emotional information.