The Effects Of Emotion On Directed Forgetting

Emotion and memory are two important aspects of the emotional and cognitive process,and affect each other in some circumstance. Emotion is regulated by,and affected to cognition; emotional state is also have effect on memory performance and behavior response of individual. Previous studies suggest that, all else equal, emotional events are more likely to be remembered than unemotional events. We know almost nothing, however, about how emotional memories respond when people deliberately endeavor to erase them. The study of directed forgetting is another experimental pattern of memory study,which concern about influence of the outdated and useless information to memory. On basis of cost-benefit principal, it emphasis on intention and direction. If remember items are superior to forgotten items, there exists the directed forgetting effect. At present, there are two main theoretical explanations: one is based on encoding and the other retrieval inhibition. The directed forgetting effect has been well established in many related researches. A few studies have examined directed forgetting effect in the context of emotion. These studies have mainly concerned clinical disorders. However, previous research has not addressed the fundamental relationship between emotional items,emotional state and directed forgetting. By using the methods of experiment, literature and interview,and list method,the present research probed into the effect of the emotional state(experiment one)and emotional items (experiment two)to directed forgetting effect. Experiment three investigate the different of the recognition and recall research paradigm,and theory explanation。The conclusions are as following:By use of word method and recall paradigm,the directed forgetting effect are found in both emotional and neutral,That means forget instruction are not effected by emotion. Induced mood before the presentation of the list two, directed forgetting effect suggest remarkable,compare to before the test. When List 1 was emotional, they are better remember, and more difficult forget. More items are recalled from emotional lists than from neutral lists, and there is no directed forgetting effect in recognition paradigm. These results are not entirely consistent with the previous studies, and we analyzed the theoretical implications broadly and deeply in this study.