The Effects Of Learning Materials' Presentation Format On List-method Directed Forgetting

The research aims to find whether the learning materials in the two lists need to match the presenting format for the directed forgetting effects to emerge in list-method directed forgetting, by revising the design of list-method directed forgetting according to the reviewing of the influence factors of directed forgetting effects and the accounts of directed forgetting.The experiment 1 aims to counterbalance the encoding difference of words and pictures through added the deep encoding task during learning the words and the shallow encoding task during learning pictures, to finding whether the learning materials' presenting formats cue could lead to the directed forgetting effects disappeared. Under the condition of different learning materials' presenting formats, 80 health college students were chosen randomly, and they are all willing to participate in the 2(list format: word/picture)×2(instruction: memory/forget) between-subject experiment. The results show that there are no difference between to-be-forget group and to-be-remember group of list1 and list2 recall performances. The experiment 1 results demonstrate that the encoding advantage of picture is not a significant factor to the directed forgetting effects, and the earning materials' presenting formats could play a key role in the disappeared directed forgetting effects.The experiment 2 aims to eliminate the learning materials encoding advantage, choosing the learning materials just having presenting format difference. In the experiment 2, learning materials are high frequently Chinese and English, choosing proficient Chinese-English bilinguals as participants. 160 participants were randomly allocated in the 2(list format: word/picture) ×2(instruction: memory/forget) ×2(format match: match/unmatched) between-subject design. The results show that there are significant difference between to-be-forget group and to-be-remember group of list1 and list2 recall performances under the condition of two lists formats matched; while there are no difference between to-be-forget group and to-be-remember group of list1 and list2 recall performances under the condition of two lists formats unmatched. Forgetting effects were observed only when the lists matched in format but not when the formats mismatched. This result establishes an important boundary condition of directed forgetting and suggests that when salient retrieval cues guide retrieval, they eliminate the effect of the “forget” cue. Implications for theories of directed forgetting are discussed.