关键词: 定向遗忘, 情绪贬值, 线索, 加工情境

Abstract:

The theory of inhibitory devaluation posits that interfering stimuli in selective attention undergo emotional devaluation due to inhibition. However, directed forgetting only involves target stimuli matching different cues. It is still unclear whether the emotional devaluation in directed forgetting stems from inhibiting forgotten items or from the cue’s differential effects. Experiment 1 examined the mechanism of emotional devaluation using the item-method directed forgetting paradigm. In Experiment 1a, there was no significant difference between the evaluation of new items and forgetting items. The evaluation of new items under the forgetting cues was lower than that under the memory cues, indicating that emotional devaluation is not caused by inhibition, but depends on different processing contexts induced by two cues. Experiment 1b found that the evaluation of no-cue items was lower than that of memory items and higher than that of forgetting items. This result indicated that memory and forgetting cues led to positive and negative emotional encoding of items, respectively. Experiment 2 found that the devaluation effect of mixed cues was greater than that of single cues in selective directed forgetting. This indicated that selective attention promoted emotional devaluation in directed forgetting. In brief, emotional devaluation in directed forgetting arises due to memory cues and forgetting cues assigning distinct emotional connotations to neutral information, a process amplified by selective attention.

Key words: directed forgetting, emotional devaluation, cue, processing context