Remembering Can Cause Forgetting – but Not in Negative Moods Psychological Science – 2007 Karl-Heinz Bauml and Christof Kuhbandner Presented by Tachelle Nettles Fall 2010

Article Definitions Affective states – positive or negative emotions/moods Retrieval induced forgetting – forgetting that is caused by the retrieval process itself Item-specific processing– processing events by their details Relational processing –processing events in relation to other concepts in memory

Background Goal: To investigate how affective states might influence retrieval-induced forgetting Question : Does the affective state experienced during retrieval influence forgetting independent of the contents to be retrieved?

Prior Findings Repeated retrieval of a subset of previously observed events can cause later forgetting of non-retrieved events Emotions can influence how info is processed Positive emotions result in relational- processing Negative emotions result in item-specific processing

Assumptions Mood may affect retrieval-induced forgetting During retrieval of to-be-practiced items only related items should interfere and be inhibited to reduce interference Positive and negative moods may have opposing effects on retrieval-induced forgetting: enhancing in one case and reducing in the other

Summary of Study Volunteers asked to study episodic material Immediately before retrieval a mood was induced and then volunteers were asked to retrieve a subset of the material Researchers examined whether mood affected later recall of the nonretrieved material.

Subjects 27 Students at Regensburg University, Germany tested individually

Materials 6 Word Lists Each contained items from 3 semantic categories 6 emotionally neutral words Initial letter of each word was unique 10 Positive, 10 Negative, 10 Neutral pictures People with diseases and mutilated bodies (negative) Erotic Scenes and babies (positive) Scenery and objects (neutral)

Design (1 of 3) 3 x 3 design – mood and word type Practiced (P+)Unpracticed (P-)Control (C) Positive Negative Neutral Negative Positive Neutral Word list: (4 Phases)

Design Continued (2 of 3) For each single list the experiment consisted of 4 main phases Study Phase Mood-Induction Phase Retrieval-Practice Phase Final Test Phase For each of the 6 lists in the, subjects attempted to retrieve half of the items from 2 of 3 categories

Design Continued (3 of 3) 3 types of words created Retrieval practiced (P+ words) Unpracticed words belonging to same 2 categories as P+ words (P- words) Unpracticed words from unpracticed category, serves as control words (C words) Fruit (P+) Apple Orange Fruit (P-) Banana Plum Drinks (C) Vodka Rum

Procedure (1 of 2) Study Phase Each word on list displayed on computer screen for 5s with category name Random sequence of 6 blocks 30-s distracter task before next phase Mood-Induction Phase Subjects successively shown 5 pictures of the same valence and told to let it influence their emotional state (6-secs each)

Procedure Continued (2 of 2) Retrieval-Practice Phase Word stem of P+ presented with category name and asked to complete with a studied word Presented twice at 2.5 s per stem Mood measured 3-min distracter Final Test Phase Subjects given 1 st letter of studied word with category and asked to name appropriate word Fruit: A____ 30 sec break between study phase of next list

Results Manipulation Check Retrieval-Practice Phase Final Recall Test

Manipulation Check Results Across conditions, subjects varied reliably in mood Arousal between positive and neutral conditions differed reliably from arousal in negative condition

Retrieval-Practice Phase Results Retrieval success in retrieval-practice phase was high and did not vary reliably across mood conditions

Final Recall Test Results Retrieval practice enhanced later recall of P+ words In positive and neutral mood conditions performance was lower for the P- words than the C words In the negative mood condition recall of P- words was slightly higher than recall of C words Amount of forgetting differed reliably between the positive and negative mood conditions

Final Recall Test Results

Discussion Affect can influence retrieval-induced forgetting When negative affect was experienced in retrieval- practice phase it did not cause forgetting of non- retrieved words from practice category Reliable forgetting found in subjects who experienced positive and neutral moods Results consistent with recent findings indicating that negative emotions induce predominately item-specific processing

Discussion Continued Results show a tendency for more forgetting in the positive-mood than in the neutral-mood condition (not significant difference) Results primarily demonstrate the influence of negative moods on retrieval-induced forgetting, indicating that a change from the (default) relational mode to an item-specific mode of retrieval can eliminate the forgetting. Results suggest that mood may influence eyewitness testimony.

Questions? Thoughts? Questions?

Article Citation Kuhbandner, C. (2007). Remembering Can Cause Forgetting-but Not in Negative Moods. Psychological Science, 18(2),