1. Robin Law & David Groome (University of Westminster)
MINDFULNESS AND
RETRIEVAL-INDUCED FORGETTING
Robin Law & David Groome (University of Westminster)
Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF)
Retrieving a memory trace inhibits the retrieval of rival memory traces (Anderson et al 1994)
Mindfulness
“Being attentive to and aware of what is taking
place in the present” (Brown & Ryan, 2003)
Mindfulness thus involves focussing
conscious attention on the present moment,
and suppressing memories of past events.
This process may involve memory inhibition
based on a similar mechanism to that found in
retrieval-induced forgetting (below).
Procedure
87 participants completed three tests:
1. RIF test 2. MAAS Mindfulness Scale
3. State-Trait Anxiety Scale
Three different RIF procedures were used, using category cues, letter cues, and recognition cues respectively.
Inhibition
Trace 1
Cue
Trace 2
Retrieval
Results
Pearson correlations between RIF,
State Anxiety, Trait Anxiety, and Mindfulness.
Exp. 1 CATEGORY CUED RIF (n = 21)
S-Anx T-Anx RIF
Mindfulness
Exp. 2 LETTER-CUED RIF (n = 31)
S-Anx T-Anx RIF
Mindfulness - .38* ** - .37*
Exp RECOGNITION-CUED RIF (n = 35)
S-Anx T-Anx RIF
Mindfulness ** - .12
* p < ** p < .01
Conclusions
MAAS and RIF (letter-cued) correlate negatively
This finding offers no support for the hypothesis that
mindfulness involves the same inhibitory process as RIF
2. MAAS and RIF (category-cued & recog-cued) do not correlate significantly. This finding may reflect the fact that these procedures are a poor measure of RIF.
3. Mindfulness correlates negatively with anxiety, as does RIF. So anxiety is unlikely to mediate the inverse RIF/MAAS relationship.
4. The inverse correlation between RIF and MAAS may reflect some other aspect of mindfulness, such as focusing on a target item without generating associates.