The Effect Of Inhibition Strategies On Negative And Neutral Memory Suppression Effects

All experiments were divided into three phases, including learning phase, experimental phase and memory test phase, and all were the same in the processes of learning phase. During the learning phase, participants were asked to remember the pairs that the neutral faces coupled with negative or neutral pictures. For experiment1, in the experimental phase, participants were asked to recall the pictures with faces with green border, and actively inhibite the pictures with faces with red border. In the memory test phase, participants were asked to recall the corresponding pictures to faces that were presented, and write down some words to describe the pictures. For experiment2, in the experimental phase, besides that recall the pictures for faces with green border and suppress the pictures for faces with red border, participants were asked to learn the new pictures paired with the faces with red border; In the memory test phase, participants recall the initial pictures according the cues and then recall the substitutional pictures for suppressed cues, and describe the pictures with words.The results of the cued recall test showed that the recall rates for no-think condition was lower than that on baseline and think condition, there is no differences between negative emotional and neutral memories in memory inhibition, regardless of whether there are instruction of strategies. In experiment1, without no instruction of strategy, participants who was compliant to the instruction and made great efforts to inhibite or applied the substitution strategy displayed greater amount of inhibition than the one who was incompliant with the instruction. When the substition strategies were applied, recall rates for positive substution strategy was the lowest, and highest for negative substution strategy, neutral substution strategy in between.The results suggest that unwanted negative and neutral memories could be inhibited through direct cognitive control. In the process of memory inhibition, when objects in different emotional valence was applied to substitute the unwanted memories, inhibition effect for the positive objects were the best.