Effects Of Coding Duration And Cognitive Load On Intentional Forgetting

Human memory storage system is not unlimited expansion and inclusion,intentional forgetting as an important aspect of the memory system,it is not only conducive to the update of the memory system,but also has a strong adaptive function.The intentional forgetting theory holds that the main function of the memory system in daily life is to remember and forget.Forgetting invalid information has the same value as remembering valid information.Perfect memory is selective,that is,we must remember the information that should be remembered,and forget the forgotten information at the same time.The efficient memory system is in the process of constantly updating information.Therefore,a focus of memory research is whether the forgetting of useless information is a negative byproduct of storing new memories or the activation of a certain suppression mechanism.The debate about the mechanism behind intentional forgetting mostly revolves around selective repetition and suppression control theory.Retelling theory holds that forgetting is the passive decline of useless information,while inhibitory control theory holds that forgetting is the active suppression of useless information.Research on intentional forgetting often adopts the directed forgetting paradigm.Therefore,researchers also refer to intentional forgetting as directed forgetting.The theory of selective retelling believes that the difference in memory occurs because the subject begins to retell the memory item when the clue that prompts the memory appears,but the subject does not retell when the clue that prompts the forgetting appears,which makes the TBR item The encoding is more refined than the TBF item.Inhibition control theory emphasizes the suppression of irrelevant information by forgetting clues in intentional forgetting,rather than the selective repetition of relevant information.At the same time,the proponents of the dual mechanism theory believe that the generation mechanism of project-oriented directed forgetting has both selective retelling and suppression control.In the directed forgetting paradigm,different types of prompt clues correspond to two different generating mechanisms.When it appeared,the subjects repeated the TBR item,but the appearance of the "forget" clue triggered the active suppression of the TBF item.This study adopts the project-oriented forgetting paradigm.Experiment 1 explores the effect of coding duration on intentional forgetting by manipulating the clue strength of clues.The results show that the longer the clue presentation time,the higher the recognition results of the TBR and TBF items.And the intentional forgetfulness score(TBR-TBF)drops,and the directional forgetting effect disappears.This result is neither consistent with selective retelling nor suppression control theory.Some researchers believe that when cognitive resources are available,TBF items will be automatically activated,and their activation will accumulate as the coding time passes.In other words,the TBF project will be processed automatically when cognitive resources are still available.This automatic process is interrupted when cognitive resources are exhausted or reduced by other processes(such as retrieval and retelling of TBR projects).According to this speculation,the reason why the directional forgetting effect does not exist stably under different encoding durations may be affected by the excessive cognitive resources remaining after processing the TBR project.Therefore,Experiment 2 introduces the variable of cognitive load on the basis of Experiment 1,and examines the changes in grades under different cognitive load conditions with the extension of coding time.The results show that under low-load conditions,the effect of coding duration of TBF items is significant,and the recognition performance of TBF items increases with the increase of coding time,and the directional forgetting effect is unstable.However,under high-load conditions,the coding duration effect of the TBF item is not significant.The recognition performance of the TBF item does not increase significantly with the increase of the coding time,and the directional forgetting effect exists steadily.Studies have shown that intentional forgetting is not always an effective psychological control strategy,and the level of forgetting will be affected by the cognitive load of the material itself.Under the condition of high cognitive load,no matter how long the coding is,it will produce successful intentional forgetting.The deliberate forgetting under low cognitive load is greatly affected by the length of coding.Perhaps it is because in the memory coding stage of directed forgetting,the brain encodes the TBR project as much as possible,and the TBF project only performs basic classification coding.The higher the cognitive load,the more resources the participants put in processing resources On the TBR project,this coding feature is more prominent.Therefore,with the increase of coding time,the directional forgetting effect is enhanced under high load conditions,and the directional forgetting effect is weakened under low load conditions;Selective retelling is an important mechanism for project-oriented forgetting,but the coding of TBF projects will not be completely terminated after the clues of forgetting appear.