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

摘要：

抑制贬值理论认为选择性注意中干扰刺激由于被抑制而产生情绪贬值，但定向遗忘仅包含目标刺激且与不同线索相匹配。定向遗忘情绪贬值是对遗忘项目的抑制还是线索的不同作用导致仍不清楚。实验1考察项目法定向遗忘中情绪贬值的产生机制。实验1a发现新项目的评价与遗忘项目差异不显著，遗忘线索下新项目评价低于记忆线索下，表明情绪贬值并非抑制导致，而是依赖于线索加工情境。实验1b发现无线索项目的评价低于记忆项目并高于遗忘项目，表明记忆和遗忘线索分别导致积极和消极的情感编码。实验2考察选择性注意对定向遗忘情绪贬值的影响，发现选择性定向遗忘中混合线索下的贬值效应大于单一线索下，表明选择性注意促进定向遗忘情绪贬值。综上，定向遗忘情绪贬值是由于记忆和遗忘线索赋予中性信息不同的情感内涵，且受到选择性注意的增强作用。

关键词: 定向遗忘, 情绪贬值, 线索, 加工情境