Selective directed forgetting in children

When, after study of an item list, adults are cued to forget some of the list items and encode new information instead, such cuing often induces selective forgetting of the to-be-forgotten material without impairing recall of the other items. This study examined developmental trends in such selective directed forgetting by having second graders, sixth graders, and young adults study three successive lists of items and, after study of List 2, cuing them either to remember both List 1 and List 2 or to forget List 2 but remember List 1. Consistent with prior work, second graders exhibited no forgetting at all in response to the forget cue, whereas young adults selectively forgot List 2. Sixth graders showed still another pattern with forgetting of both List 1 and List 2, suggesting that the ability to selectively forget is still absent at this age level. Directed forgetting has often been attributed to the action of inhibitory control processes. On the basis of this view, the current finding that children during middle childhood do not yet show selective forgetting indicates that the control processes underlying selective directed forgetting mature into adolescence and early adulthood.