Effects Of Directed Forgetting On Environmental Context Effect With Complex Materials

Environmental context effect means that when the test environment is the same as the earning environment,the memory will be better than when they're different.S.Smith first observed this effect at 1921.And he has been studying it for many years.But these experiments did not involve directed forgetting when coding.In fact,people often pay no attention to irrelevant stimuli during coding and forget stimuli and scenes.At the same time,in his experiments,the situation between the scenes and the stimuli is irrelevant,which will produce some unrelated effects.Therefore,this study added two variables: directed forgetting,relationship between the scenes and the stimuli.Experiment 1 initially examined whether environmental context effect is influenced by directed forgetting,relationship between the scenes and the stimuli.Participants were 80 undergraduate students.Using a three-factor mixed design of 2(relationship between the scenes and the stimuli: related,irrelevant)× 2(relationship between coding pictures and testing pictures: same,different)× 2(directed forgetting: R and F),where the relationship between the scenes and the stimuli: related,irrelevant and the relationship between coding pictures and testing pictures is within group,and directed forgetting is between groups.Experiment 2 further examined whether environmental context effect is influenced by directed forgetting,relationship between the scenes and the stimuli.Participants were 80 undergraduate students.The experimental procedures of experiment 2 was basically the same as experiment 1.However,the two levels of relationship between coding pictures and testing pictures in experiment 1 were replaced by same context but different scene and conceptually context.Using a three-factor mixed design of 2(relationship between the scenes and the stimuli: related,irrelevant)× 2(relationship between coding pictures and testing pictures: same context but different scene,conceptually context)× 2(directed forgetting: R and F),where the relationship between the scenes and the stimuli: related,irrelevant and the relationship between coding pictures and testing pictures is within group,and directed forgetting is between groups.Experiment 3 examines the rationality of the context change theory as the explanation of environmental context effect with directed forgetting and the relationship between the scenes and the stimuli when coding.The procedures were basically the same as those of experiment 1/2 except the directed forgetting order was replaced by context imagination order.Imagination was compared with the result of the experiment under the task of forgotten/memory instructions.Experiment 3 is divided into two sub-experiments,which correspond to Experiments 1 and 2,respectively.Each sub-experiment has 120 participants and uses a three-factor mixed design of 2(relationship between the scenes and the stimuli: related,irrelevant)× 2(relationship between coding pictures and testing pictures: same,different/ same context but different scene,conceptually context)× 2(directed forgetting: R and F),where the relationship between the scenes and the stimuli: related,irrelevant and the relationship between coding pictures and testing pictures is within group,and directed forgetting is between groups.The experimental results show that environmental context effect is affected by directed forgetting and relationship between the scenes and the stimuli.It can be seen that the recall under the memory instruction is significantly higher than that of the forgetting instruction,and the recall of the subjects under related is significantly higher than unrelated.At the same time,the context change theory can be reasonably explained environmental context effect with directed forgetting and the relationship between the scenes and the stimuli when coding.It shows that under the context imagination order,the recall under the task of the imaginary task is not significantly different from that of the F-directive,and the recall under the task of the imaginary task is significantly different from that of the R-directive.