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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 8, 2026

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

A Dual Task Procedure Combined with Rapid Serial Visual Presentation to Test Attentional Blink for Nontargets

Published on: December 5, 2014

Divided attention facilitates intentional forgetting: evidence from item-method directed forgetting.

Yuh-shiow Lee¹, Huang-Mou Lee

¹Department of Psychology, National Chung-Cheng University, Chiayi 621, Taiwan, ROC. psyysl@ccu.edu.tw

Consciousness and Cognition

|October 1, 2010

Summary

Directed forgetting is more effective when participants perform a secondary task after receiving a forget cue, especially with longer post-cue intervals. This suggests forgetting can be an automatic process.

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Last Updated: Jun 8, 2026

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Memory Research

Background:

Directed forgetting is a memory phenomenon where participants are instructed to forget specific items.
The item-method directed forgetting paradigm involves cues presented after each item.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the impact of post-cue interval duration and cognitive load on item-method directed forgetting.
To determine whether cognitive load affects intentional forgetting processes.

Main Methods:

Two experiments were conducted using free recall (Experiment 1) and cued recall (Experiment 2) tests.
Participants were instructed to remember or forget specific items.
A secondary counting task was introduced to manipulate cognitive load.

Main Results:

Forget item retention significantly increased with longer post-cue intervals.
Increased cognitive load facilitated intentional forgetting under long post-cue interval conditions.
Recall gains suggest an automatic process rather than effortful suppression.

Conclusions:

Longer post-cue intervals enhance directed forgetting, likely through automatic processes.
Performing a secondary task after a forget cue can improve forgetting effectiveness.
Intentional forgetting may not always involve resource-demanding suppression operations.