Retrieval-Induced Forgetting of Emotional Autobiographical Memories

Retrieval-induced forgetting is a phenomenon in which the retrieval of an item from\nmemory causes the forgetting of other related or competing items. This forgetting is thought to\nbe the consequence of inhibitory processes that act to prevent unwanted competing responses\nfrom coming to mind when attempting to retrieve a target response. While Barnier, Hung, and\nConway (2004) demonstrated that autobiographical events can be forgotten using a retrieval-induced\nforgetting paradigm, they failed to control for output order. The current study replicated\nBarnier et al. (2004) while controlling for output order to test whether the forgetting they\nobserved was merely due to blocking-based output interference. After recalling positive and\nnegative autobiographical memories using word cues, participants were asked to retrieve a\nsubset of their originally reported memories. They were then tested on their ability to retrieve\ninitially recalled memories. We predicted similar results to Barnier et al. (2004), such that\npeople would show retrieval-induced forgetting for autobiographical memories that are\nfollowed by the retrieval of other, related memories. Results supported this hypothesis; people\nrecalled positive and negative unpracticed memories from practiced cue word sets at a lower\nrate than unpracticed positive and negative memories from unpracticed cue word sets. By\ndemonstrating forgetting while controlling for output interference it is clear that other\nmechanisms, such as inhibition, may be responsible for autobiographical retrieval-induced\nforgetting.