Self-reference Memory Extraction Induced To Forget

Retrieving some information from long term memory will cause the forgetting of the related memory. It is a robust memory phenomenon named retrieval induced forgetting. However, previous research found that if participants conducted a self-reference process in the study period, retrieval induced forgetting will no longer occur. They argued that it was because the Rp- item was protected from inhibition with the help of the self. But they ignored the organization function of the self, which may also contribute to the diminish of forgetting. In order to explore this possibility, two experiment was designed. Experiment 1 changed the way which participants do for the study period, and improved the connection between item and its type, but still no retrieval induced forgetting was observed. Experiment 2 changed the type into its nature type, and assessed the theta oscillations of the retrieval phase. In the current experiment, retrieval induced forgetting occurred in both retrieval and restudy situation, and the theta oscillation was significantly smaller in the restudy situation, which suggested that the top-down inhibition do occur during retrieval even if self reference was processed.