Forgetting in context: the effects of age, emotion, and social factors on retrieval-induced forgetting

Abstract

Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) refers to the finding that selectively retrieving some information impairs subsequent memory for related but nonretrieved information. This occurs both for the individual doing the remembering (i.e., within-individual retrieval-induced forgetting: WI-RIF), as well as for individuals merely listening to those recollections (i.e., socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting: SS-RIF). In the present study, we examined how the contextual factors of age and emotion independently and interactively affect both WI-RIF and SS-RIF. The results indicated that both WI-RIF and SS-RIF occurred at equivalent levels, both for younger and older adults and for neutral and emotional information. However, we identified a boundary condition to this effect: People only exhibited SS-RIF when the speaker that they were listening to was of the same sex as themselves. Given that participants reported feeling closer to same-sex speakers, this suggests that people co-retrieve more, and therefore exhibit increased SS-RIF, with close others. In everyday life, these RIF effects should influence what information is remembered versus forgotten in individual and collective memories.

Figure 1

Examples of our stimuli. Counterbalancing was used such that items appeared equally often as emotional (either negative or positive) or neutral during the study phase.

Figure 2

Proportion of items recalled by Listeners as a function of retrieval practice and whether the Speaker was the same, or opposite sex as themselves. Socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting (recall of NRp > Rp−) was only observed when the Listener and Speaker were the same sex. Error bars are +/− one SE.