Cheng, S. 1 , Lin, W. 1 , Liu, I. 1, 2 , Hung, D. 1 & Tzeng, O. J. 1, 3
1 National Central University, Taiwan
2 Chung-Yuan Christian University, Taiwan
3 Academia Sinica, Taiwan
An obvious interpretation for the item-method directed forgetting effect emphasizes the different processing of to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items during encoding. TBR items are well remembered because they receive elaborative rehearsals following the presentation of the Remember cue. It is however not yet clear whether TBF items are passively decayed or actively inhibited in response to a Forget cue. To address this issue, behavioral and ERP studies were conducted to examine the processing depths of TBR/TBF items and how active inhibition might be involved in item-method directed forgetting. The P200 and N400 waves were used to index the attention allocation and the semantic processing following the presentation of the Remember and Forget cues. We also examined the modulation of attention load on directed forgetting by incorporating a dual task to the item-method directed forgetting. The results suggest that forgetting is indeed effortful and demands active inhibition.