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Towards a Cognitive and Neurobiological Model of Motivated Forgetting

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Book cover True and False Recovered Memories

Part of the book series: Nebraska Symposium on Motivation ((NSM,volume 58))

Abstract

Historically, research on forgetting has been dominated by the assumption that forgetting is passive, reflecting decay, interference, and changes in context. This emphasis arises from the pervasive assumption that forgetting is a negative outcome. Here, we present a functional view of forgetting in which the fate of experience in memory is determined as much by motivational forces that dictate the focus of attention as it is by passive factors. A central tool of motivated forgetting is retrieval suppression, a process whereby people shut down episodic retrieval to control awareness. We review behavioral, neurobiological, and clinical research and show that retrieval suppression leads us to forget suppressed experiences. We discuss key questions necessary to address to develop this model, relationships to other forgetting phenomena, and the implications of this research for understanding recovered memories. This work provides a foundation for understanding how motivational forces influence what we remember of life experience.

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Acknowledgments

Preparation of this article was supported by National Science Foundation grant 0643321. The authors would like to thank Robert Bjork, Steve Smith, Karl-Heinz Bauml, Lili Sahakyan, Tracy Taylor-Hemick, Paula Hertel, Jutta Joormann, Kepa Paz-Alanso, Roland Benoit, and Zara Bergstrom for useful comments on this manuscript.

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  1. MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, England, UK

    Michael C. Anderson & Ean Huddleston

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Correspondence to Michael C. Anderson .

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  1. , Dept of Psychology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Burnett Hall 223, Lincoln, 68588, Nebraska, USA

    Robert F. Belli

Appendix A

Appendix A

The 32 published articles on which the meta-analysis in Fig. 3 (right panel) is based. Note that four published articles are not included either because they used different dependent measures or did not fully report recall data (see caption, Fig. 3).

figure a_3

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Anderson, M.C., Huddleston, E. (2012). Towards a Cognitive and Neurobiological Model of Motivated Forgetting. In: Belli, R. (eds) True and False Recovered Memories. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, vol 58. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1195-6_3

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