The role of selective rehearsal and attentional inhibition in directed forgetting

The directed forgetting paradigm has been extensively used to assess how subjects intentionally limit the future expression of specific memory content. In the item method, subjects are given a list of words with the instruction to remember every item followed by a “remember” cue (to-be-remembered items or TBR) and to forget items followed by a “forget” cue (to-be-forgotten items or TBF). Typically, TBR items are better recalled or recognized than TBF items when subjects are subsequently tested on all presented words, regardless of study instructions. However, it is currently not clear if this directed forgetting effect is due to a selective rehearsal of TBR items or to an attentional inhibition of TBF items. In the present study, the performance of two groups of subjects that performed a directed forgetting task with or without articulatory suppression was compared. Indeed, if selective rehearsal is responsible of the directed forgetting effect, the effect should disappear when subjects are not allowed to rehearse TBR items because of the articulatory suppression instruction. Results showed an equivalent directed forgetting effect between the two groups on a recognition task. These results suggest that selective rehearsal is not the major determinant of the directed forgetting effect.