Directed Forgetting Of Traumatic Memory

Traumatic memory refers to those memories of psychological,emotional and even physiological abnormal states caused by more serious traumatic events in life.It mainly reflects the individual’s cognition and emotional memory of trauma and is a special emotional memory.Traumatic memory exists between coping of the traumatic event,not only for the veteran event at the same time,because of its sudden and huge damage,also can form different degree of traumatic memories.Traumatic memory is the kind of memories that people desperately want to forget,whether they are experienced or not.However,due to its sudden and emotional enhancement,traumatic memory is difficult to forget.Directed forgetting research provides a new active forgotten traumatic memories of inspiration,directed forgetting(DF),also known as intentional forgetting,refers to the voluntary and conscious forgetting of the contents remembered by individuals,which emphasizes the intention and directivity of forgetting(Anderson,2003;Bjork,1972).Previous studies have shown that emotional memory on the one hand can enhance the memory effect,but also can produce directed forgetting effect.Traumatic memory as a special kind of emotional memory,in addition to have the emotional characteristics,also has the characteristics of sudden and irritability.It is worthy of great attention whether the traumatic memory can be eliminated or alleviated by means of directed forgetting.In addition,in daily life,psychological intervention effects such as relieving negative emotions and relieving pressure can also be achieved through travel distraction.so it is assumed that if add scenery in traumatic memories sequence images,such as learning content may help emotional hedge,relieve pressure,resulting in increased traumatic memories directed forgetting effect.Liu(2013)point out that individuals can through to the images or pictures was traumatic experiences,so as to reconstruct the traumatic memories of people.Therefore,this study used the traumatic images related to the May 12 earthquake as stimulus materials in order to reconstruct people’s traumatic memory,and further explored the directed forgetting effect and characteristics of traumatic memory through two experiments using the method of directed forgetting,and try to promote traumatic memories directional forgotten intervention to provide experimental basis.In experiment 1,the characteristics of directed forgetting effect of traumatic memory were investigated by using the item-method directed forgetting paradigm.Considering the lives and property value differences on the possible effect of directed forgetting effect,the traumatic stimulus materials(pictures)were further divided into the character casualty memory group(the character trauma group)and the building damage memory group(the building trauma group)in the experimental design,based on the two types of traumatic memories of the directed forgetting effect comparison,discusses traumatic memories directed forgetting effect of whether life exists particularity.The experimental results showed that,on the indicators of recognition accuracy,the main effect of memory instruction is significant(p<0.001),the typical directed forgetting effect was found in the trauma pictures on the whole.Meanwhile,the directed forgetting effect was also found in the architectural trauma group(p=0.006)and the character trauma group(p=0.027),indicating that different types of trauma pictures could be actively forgotten.Trauma type of edge main effect was significant(p=0.083),the character images of trauma(M=0.736)recognition accuracy is significantly higher than building trauma group(M=0.667),found the memory of the character trauma pictures edge effect.However,the interaction between trauma type and memory instruction was not significant(p>0.05),indicating that there was no significant difference between the two image types in the ability of directed forgetting.In terms of response time,the main effect and interaction effect mentioned above were not found,which was consistent with the conclusion that the directed forgetting effect and emotional effect found by Brandt,Nielsen,& Holmes(2013)did not depend on the speed of participants’ cognitive decision-making.Experiment 2 continued to use the research paradigm of directed forgetting,but added landscape pictures that can make people experience pleasant emotions into the memory sequence material,in an attempt to explore whether this intentional change of memory content can enhance the directed forgetting effect of traumatic memory,so as to provide experimental evidence for the intervention treatment of traumatic memory.Experimental results show that the landscape image and trauma pictures of old and new standards are inconsistent,and pictures of old and new,to distinguish the two kinds of trauma standards are the same,therefore,this study directly analyzed the recognition accuracy and response time of the original data of the two kinds of trauma images(Wang,Liang,& Guo,2014)and then discusses landscape image effects on traumatic memories directed forgetting effect.The results showed that the main effect of memory instruction on accuracy is significant(P =0.018)and there was a typical directed forgetting effect in the trauma pictures as a whole,indicating that the landscape pictures did not change the overall directed forgetting effect in the traumatic memory,while the landscape pictures reduced the directed forgetting effect in the traumatic memories of buildings(p=0.076)and character(p>0.05).The main effect of image type was also not significant(p>0.05),and the recognition advantage of character pictures was also weakened by landscape pictures.The reaction time index was consistent with the experimental 1 result,and no significant difference was found.The above results show that :(1)Traumatic memory,like other emotional memories,can actively forget,resulting in a typical directed forgetting effect;(2)In the earthquake disaster,compared with the trauma caused by building damage,individuals have a slightly deeper memory of human injury or death,showing an advantage in memory of character trauma;(3)The addition of landscape pictures weakens the directed forgetting effect of architectural trauma and character trauma as well as the memory advantage of character trauma;(4)It is feasible to discuss the active forgetting of traumatic memory from the perspective of directed forgetting.The addition of landscape pictures(new memory content)can change the directed forgetting effect of traumatic memory.