Selection for encoding: No evidence of greater attentional capture following forget than remember instructions

We measured attentional orienting in an item-method-directed forgetting task. Words appeared singly, followed by an instruction to remember or forget. In Experiment 1, study words appeared at center; in Experiments 2 and 3, they appeared to the left and right. In all three experiments, there was a delay of 50 ms or 250 ms, after which a cue appeared to the left or right of fixation. This was followed at a fixed 100-ms stimulus onset asynchrony by a target in the cued or uncued location. Attentional capture was measured by evaluating the speed to localize (Experiments 1 and 2) or discriminate (Experiment 3) targets in cued versus uncued locations. A subsequent yes-no recognition test confirmed a directed forgetting effect. Even though attention is purported to withdraw more readily after forget instructions than after remember instructions, we obtained no evidence for the corollary: Attention is not more readily captured by events that follow forget instructions. A forget instruction must therefore impact attention only insofar as withdrawal is needed to instantiate the intention to forget, without instigating a longer lasting distractibility.