The Impact of Attention Style on Directed Forgetting Among High Anxiety Sensitive Individuals

Effects of anxiety level on directed forgetting of emotional information and related metacognitive judgments

The present study investigated intentional forgetting of emotional information in low vs. high anxiety groups, by using a directed forgetting paradigm. The groups were formed based on their scores on measures of state and trait anxiety. Participants were provided with positive, negative, and neutral photographs with either remember or forget instructions and further provided metacognitive judgments of learning for each photograph, indicating how likely they are to recognize the photograph in a subsequent recognition test. In the recognition test, they identified the photographs that they had seen in the learning session, irrespective of instruction. The results showed that directed forgetting was only observed in the high anxiety group. Furthermore, higher anxiety scores negatively correlated with the recognition of negative to-be-forgotten information, indicating that high anxiety is associated with a better ability to forget negative information. Metacognitive judgments showed awareness of the forget instructions and the valence of the photographs, but they were not affected by anxiety level. The results suggest that the effects of anxiety on cognitive control may be different between participants with higher vs. lower anxiety levels in a non-clinical sample. The results are discussed within several theoretical frameworks which claim that anxiety may lead to the inhibition and avoidance of negatively valenced mental content.

What can directed forgetting tell us about clinical populations?

This paper reviews and critically assesses the implications of directed forgetting (DF) research on clinical populations. We begin by reviewing the typical methods and results of the item method and list method directed forgetting procedures and provide best practice recommendations for future studies using clinical populations. Next, we note that DF was often interpreted as being due to inhibition, and when clinical populations showed impaired directed forgetting, it was treated as evidence in inhibitory control difficulties. However, inhibition may not be the cause of DF effects, based on current understanding of these cognitive tasks. We instead suggest that item method DF is tied to attentional control, which might include inhibitory mechanisms (or might not). In contrast, list method DF is tied to two forms of memory control: control of mental context (indicated by effective forgetting of List 1), and changes in the strategies used to remember (indicated by better learning of List 2). We review the current state of the clinical DF literature, assess its strength based on our best practice recommendations, and call for more research when warranted.

Pain is not over when the needle ends: a review and preliminary model of acute pain memory development in childhood

SUMMARY Over the past several decades, the field of pediatric pain has made impressive advances in our understanding of the pain experience of the developing child, as well as the devastating impact of inadequately managed pain early in life. It is now well recognized that, from infancy, children are capable of developing implicit memories of pain that can influence their subsequent reactions to pain. The present review provides a synthesis of selected studies that made a significant impact on this field of inquiry, with particular emphasis on recent clinical and laboratory-based experimental research examining children’s explicit autobiographical memories for acute pain. Research has begun to move towards improving the precision with which children at risk for developing negatively estimated pain memories can be identified, given the adverse influence these memories can have on subsequent pain experiences. As such, several fear- and anxiety-related child and parent variables implicated in this process are discussed, and avenues for future research and clinical intervention are identified throughout. Finally, a preliminary empirically and theoretically derived model of acute pain memory development in childhood is presented to parsimoniously summarize the evidence accumulated to date and guide future investigation in this area.