Remembering Can Cause Forgetting – but Not in Negative Moods

1. Remembering Can Cause Forgetting – but Not in Negative Moods Psychological Science – 2007 Karl-Heinz Bauml and Christof Kuhbandner Presented by Tachelle Nettles Fall 2010

2. Affective states – positive or negative emotions/moods • Retrieval induced forgetting – forgetting that is caused by the retrieval process itself • Item-specific processing–processing events by their details • Relational processing –processing events in relation to other concepts in memory Article Definitions

3. Goal: To investigate how affective states might influence retrieval-induced forgetting • Question: Does the affective state experienced during retrieval influence forgetting independent of the contents to be retrieved? Background

4. “Repeated retrieval of a subset of previously observed events can cause later forgetting of non-retrieved events” • Emotions can influence how info is processed • Positive emotions result in relational-processing • Negative emotions result in item-specific processing Prior Findings

5. Mood may affect retrieval-induced forgetting • During retrieval of to-be-practiced items only related items should interfere and be inhibited to reduce interference • Positive and negative moods may have opposing effects on retrieval-induced forgetting: enhancing in one case and reducing in the other Assumptions

6. Volunteers asked to study episodic material • Immediately before retrieval a mood was induced and then volunteers were asked to retrieve a subset of the material • Researchers examined whether mood affected later recall of the nonretrieved material. Summary of Study

7. 27 Students at Regensburg University, Germany tested individually Subjects

8. 6 Word Lists • Each contained items from 3 semantic categories • 6 emotionally neutral words • Initial letter of each word was unique • 10 Positive, 10 Negative, 10 Neutral pictures • People with diseases and mutilated bodies (negative) • Erotic Scenes and babies (positive) • Scenery and objects (neutral) Materials

9. 3 x 3 design – mood and word type Design (1 of 3)

10. For each single list the experiment consisted of 4 main phases • Study Phase • Mood-Induction Phase • Retrieval-Practice Phase • Final Test Phase • For each of the 6 lists in the, subjects attempted to retrieve half of the items from 2 of 3 categories Design Continued (2 of 3)

11. 3 types of words created • Retrieval practiced (P+ words) • Unpracticed words belonging to same 2 categories as P+ words (P- words) • Unpracticed words from unpracticed category, serves as control words (C words) Design Continued (3 of 3)

12. Study Phase • Each word on list displayed on computer screen for 5s with category name • Random sequence of 6 blocks • 30-s distracter task before next phase • Mood-Induction Phase • Subjects successively shown 5 pictures of the same valence and told to let it influence their emotional state (6-secs each) Procedure (1 of 2)

13. Retrieval-Practice Phase • Word stem of P+ presented with category name and asked to complete with a studied word • Presented twice at 2.5 s per stem • Mood measured • 3-min distracter • Final Test Phase • Subjects given 1st letter of studied word with category and asked to name appropriate word Fruit: A____ • 30 sec break between study phase of next list Procedure Continued (2 of 2)

14. Manipulation Check • Retrieval-Practice Phase • Final Recall Test Results

15. Across conditions, subjects varied reliably in mood • Arousal between positive and neutral conditions differed reliably from arousal in negative condition Manipulation Check Results

16. Retrieval success in retrieval-practice phase was high and did not vary reliably across mood conditions Retrieval-Practice Phase Results

17. Retrieval practice enhanced later recall of P+ words • In positive and neutral mood conditions performance was lower for the P- words than the C words • In the negative mood condition recall of P- words was slightly higher than recall of C words • Amount of forgetting differed reliably between the positive and negative mood conditions Final Recall Test Results

18. Final Recall Test Results

19. Affect can influence retrieval-induced forgetting • When negative affect was experienced in retrieval-practice phase it did not cause forgetting of non-retrieved words from practice category • Reliable forgetting found in subjects who experienced positive and neutral moods • Results consistent with recent findings indicating that negative emotions induce predominately item-specific processing Discussion

20. Results show a tendency for more forgetting in the positive-mood than in the neutral-mood condition (not significant difference) • Results primarily demonstrate the influence of negative moods on retrieval-induced forgetting, indicating that a change from the (default) relational mode to an item-specific mode of retrieval can eliminate the forgetting. • Results suggest that mood may influence eyewitness testimony. Discussion Continued

21. Thoughts? • Questions? Questions?

22. Kuhbandner, C. (2007). Remembering Can Cause Forgetting-but Not in Negative Moods. Psychological Science, 18(2), 111-115. Article Citation