The Representational Consequences of Intentional Forgetting: Impairments to Both the Probability and Fidelity of Long-Term Memory

We investigated whether intentional forgetting impacts only the likelihood of later retrieval from long-term memory or whether it also impacts the fidelity of those representations that are successfully retrieved. We accomplished this by combining an item-method directed forgetting task with a testing procedure and modeling approach inspired by the delayed-estimation paradigm used in the study of visual short-term memory (STM). Abstract or concrete colored images were each followed by a remember (R) or forget (F) instruction and sometimes by a visual probe requiring a speeded detection response (E1–E3). Memory was tested using an old–new (E1–E2) or remember-know-no (E3) recognition task followed by a continuous color judgment task (E2–E3); a final experiment included only the color judgment task (E4). Replicating the existing literature, more “old” or “remember” responses were made to R than F items and RTs to postinstruction visual probes were longer following F than R instructions. Color judgments were more accurate for successfully recognized or recollected R than F items (E2–E3); a mixture model confirmed a decrease to both the probability of retrieving the F items as well as the fidelity of the representation of those F items that were retrieved (E4). We conclude that intentional forgetting is an effortful process that not only reduces the likelihood of successfully encoding an item for later retrieval, but also produces an impoverished memory trace even when those items are retrieved; these findings draw a parallel between the control of memory representations within working and long-term memory.