Suppressing memory associations impacts decision-making preference: Evidence from the think/no-think paradigm

Recent research has suggested that episodic memory can guide our decision-making. Forgetting is one essential characteristic of memory. If certain memories are suppressed to be forgotten, decisions that rely on such memories should be impacted. So far, little research has examined whether suppression of episodic memory would impact decision-making. In the current pre-registered study, the effect of memory suppression on subsequent reinforcement decision-making was examined by combining the Think/No-think paradigm and a reinforcement decision-making task. We found that suppressing memories of learned associations significantly impaired recollected memories of those associations, and participants' decision bias disappeared after their memory associations were suppressed. Furthermore, the more memory associations participants recalled, the higher decision preferences they exhibited. Our findings provide additional support for the role of episodic memory in reinforcement decision-making, and suggest that suppressing memory associations can lead to behavioral consequences.

Can't stop thinking: The role of cognitive control in suppression-induced forgetting

The ability to control unwanted memories is essential for emotional regulation and maintaining mental health. Previous evidence indicates that suppressing retrieval, which recruits executive control mechanisms to prevent unwanted memories entering consciousness, can cause forgetting, termed suppression-induced forgetting (SIF). Because these executive mechanisms involve multiple mental operations, their effects may be limited by individuals' capacity limitation of cognitive control. Here, we tested the hypothesis that cognitive control capacity (CCC, estimated by the backward masking majority function task) is an important factor that predicts SIF. Participants were assigned to two groups based on the median CCC and performed the think/no-think task with electrophysiological signals recorded. The results showed that the SIF effect was observed only in the high CCC group but not in the low CCC group. In accordance, repeated suppression attempts also resulted in a steeper reduction in intrusive thoughts in the high CCC group. Furthermore, ERP analysis revealed a decrease in recollection-related late parietal positivity (LPP) under the no-think condition in the high CCC group, indicating successful avoidance of recall. A mediation analysis revealed that the reduced intrusive memories mediated the effect of CCC on SIF. These findings suggest that suppressing retrieval could reduce traces of the unwanted memories, making them less intrusive and harder to recall. More importantly, successful SIF is constrained by the capacity of cognitive control which may be used to ensure the coordination of multiple cognitive processes during suppression.

Functional connectivity between right-lateralized ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and insula mediates reappraisal's link to memory control

BACKGROUND

Memory control (MC) ability is critical for people's mental and physical health. Previous research had conceptually demonstrated that MC ability has close relationship with reappraisal. However, experimental evidence supporting the relationship was limited. Thus, in the present study, we investigated how MC and reappraisal are linked, both in behavior and in the brain.

METHODS

The habitual use of reappraisal was assessed by Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, and memory control ability was measured through directed forgetting task. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to test the seed-based functional connectivity in 181 healthy subjects.

RESULTS

Behavioral results revealed that more frequent reappraisal was associated with an enhanced ability to control negative memories. Resting-state seed-based functional connectivity showed that habitual use of reappraisal was positively related to the strength of functional connectivity between the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and right insula. Most importantly, this functional connectivity mediated the effect of habitual use of reappraisal on control over negative memories.

LIMITATIONS

Present results mainly showed the habitual use of reappraisal was related with MC ability in negative items. Future study could further explore the relationship between MC ability of different categories of negative emotional memories and other kinds of ER strategies.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results support the notion that reappraisal provides opportunities for individuals to practice and enhance inhibitory control-a relationship underpinned by connectivity between the right VLPFC and right insula.

Investigating the mediating effect of working memory on intentional forgetting in dysphoria

Our aim was to determine if deficits in intentional forgetting that are associated with depression and dysphoria (subclinical depression) could be explained, at least in part, by variations in working memory function. Sixty dysphoric and 61 non-dysphoric participants completed a modified version of the think/no-think (TNT) task and a measure of complex working memory (the operation span task). The TNT task involved participants learning a series of emotional cue-target word pairs, before being presented with a subset of the cues and asked to either recall the associated target (think) or to prevent it from coming to mind (no think) by thinking about a substitute target word. Participants were subsequently asked to recall the targets to all cues (regardless of previous recall instructions). As expected, after controlling for anxiety, we found that dysphoric individuals exhibited impaired forgetting relative to the non-dysphoric participants. Also as expected, we found that superior working memory function was associated with more successful forgetting. Critically, in the dysphoric group, we found that working memory mediated the effect of depression on intentional forgetting. That is, depression influenced forgetting indirectly via its effect on working memory. However, under conditions of repeated suppression, there was also a direct effect of depression on forgetting. These findings represent an important development in the understanding of impaired forgetting in depression and also suggest that working memory training might be a viable intervention for improving the ability of depressed individuals to prevent unwanted memories from coming to mind.

The impairing effect of acute stress on suppression-induced forgetting of future fears and its moderation by working memory capacity

Unwanted imaginations of future fears can, to some extent, be avoided. This is achieved by control mechanisms similar to those engaged to suppress and forget unwanted memories. Suppression-induced forgetting relies on the executive control network, whose functioning is impaired after exposure to acute stress. This study investigates whether acute stress affects the ability to intentionally control future fears and, furthermore, whether individual differences in executive control predict a susceptibility to these effects. The study ran over two consecutive days. On day 1, the working memory capacity of one hundred participants was assessed. Thereafter, participants provided descriptions and details of fearful episodes that they imagined might happen in their future. On day 2, participants were exposed to either the stress or no-stress version of the Maastricht Acute Stress Test, after which participants performed the Imagine/No-Imagine task. Here, participants repeatedly imagined some future fears and suppressed imaginings of others. Results demonstrated that, in unstressed participants, suppression successfully induced forgetting of the episodes' details compared to a baseline condition. However, anxiety toward these events did not differ. Acute stress was found to selectively impair suppression-induced forgetting and, further, this effect was moderated by working memory capacity. Specifically, lower working memory predicted a susceptibility to these detrimental effects. These findings provide novel insights into conditions under which our capacity to actively control future fears is reduced, which may have considerable implications for understanding stress-related psychopathologies and symptomatologies characterized by unwanted apprehensive thoughts.

Active Forgetting: Adaptation of Memory by Prefrontal Control

Over the past century, psychologists have discussed whether forgetting might arise from active mechanisms that promote memory loss to achieve various functions, such as minimizing errors, facilitating learning, or regulating one's emotional state. The past decade has witnessed a great expansion in knowledge about the brain mechanisms underlying active forgetting in its varying forms. A core discovery concerns the role of the prefrontal cortex in exerting top-down control over mnemonic activity in the hippocampus and other brain structures, often via inhibitory control. New findings reveal that such processes not only induce forgetting of specific memories but also can suppress the operation of mnemonic processes more broadly, triggering windows of anterograde and retrograde amnesia in healthy people. Recent work extends active forgetting to nonhuman animals, presaging the development of a multilevel mechanistic account that spans the cognitive, systems, network, and even cellular levels. This work reveals how organisms adapt their memories to their cognitive and emotional goals and has implications for understanding vulnerability to psychiatric disorders.

Stop Thinking: An Experience Sampling Study on Suppressing Distractive Thoughts at Work

In modern work environments, it can be difficult for workers to avoid becoming distracted from their current task. This study investigates person-situation interactions to predict thought control activities (kind of self-control), which aim to stop distracting thoughts that enter the mind. Specifically, it was examined (1) how challenging work demands (time pressure, task complexity) activate workers' thought control to stop distractive thoughts (n level 2 = 143) and relate to the effort to do so (n level 2 = 91) in daily working life and (2) how these relationships differ according workers' general cognitive ability to suppress unwanted thoughts. To understand these person-situation interactions, an experience sampling study was combined with a laboratory task assessing the ability to suppress unwanted thoughts (think/no-think task). Multilevel modeling revealed that workers' engage more often and more intensively in thought control activities at a moderate level of time pressure but only when they had a higher general ability to suppress unwanted thoughts. For workers with a lower ability to suppress unwanted thoughts, increasing time pressure was negatively related to thought control activities, even at very low levels of time pressure. Thus, whether time pressure activates or hinders thought control depends on individuals' ability to suppress distractive thoughts.

Pre-experimental sleep effects on directed forgetting

A directed forgetting (DF) paradigm was used to compare the remembering and forgetting of participants with good sleep quality to those with poor sleep quality and the presence of insomnia symptoms. This study implemented a point system in place of remember and forget instructions in a DF task with the goal of computing DF costs and benefits. Relations among memory, sleep, and working memory capacity (WMC) were also examined. DF benefits were observed in both groups, with negative costs found for participants without the presence of insomnia symptoms. WMC was found to be related to memory for positive point items only, and did not differ based on sleep quality. These results suggest that the presence of self-reported insomnia symptoms does not affect performance on a DF task.

Time to Forget

Abstract. Emerging technologies at work encourage the collection and storage of large amounts of data. However, these vast quantities of data are likely to impair efficient work decisions by employees over time, with negative consequences for the organization. As human attention increasingly represents the scarce resource at work, the present paper focuses on a mechanism of attentional control at work – namely, intentionally forgetting unwanted and outdated internal (e. g., knowledge) and external (e. g., digital objects) information. The purpose of this paper is threefold. Based on a short review of the research on intentional forgetting, a prototypical conceptualization of an interactive assistive system (Dare2Del, cognitive companion) is provided, which should support employees in temporally ignoring or permanently deleting outdated information. Then, we completed a critical incident study to examine why and when employees might want to forget information at work, and to identify in which working situations an assistive system should be particularly helpful.

The impact of retrieval suppression on conceptual implicit memory

When people suppress retrieval of episodic memories, it can induce forgetting on later direct tests of memory for those events. Recent reports indicate that suppressing retrieval affects less conscious, unintentional retrieval of unwanted memories as well, at least on perceptually-oriented indirect tests. In the current study we examined how suppressing retrieval affects conceptual implicit memory for the suppressed content, using a category verification task. Participants studied cue-target words pairs in which the targets were exemplars of 22 semantic categories, such as vegetables or occupations. They then repeatedly retrieved or suppressed the targets in response to the cues for some of those pairs. Afterwards, they were exposed to the targets intermixed with novel items, one at a time, and asked to verify the membership of each of the words in a semantic category, as quickly as possible. Judgment response times to studied words were faster than to unstudied exemplars, reflecting repetition priming, as has been previously observed. Strikingly, the beneficial effects of prior exposure on response time were eliminated for targets that had been suppressed. Follow-up explicit memory tests also demonstrated that retrieval suppression continued to disrupt episodic recall for the items that had been just been re-exposed on the category verification test. These findings support the contention that the effects of retrieval suppression are not limited to episodic memory, but also affect indirect expressions of those memories on conceptually oriented tests, raising the possibility that underlying semantic representations of suppressed content are affected.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger: Psychological trauma and its relationship to enhanced memory control

Control processes engaged in halting the automatic retrieval of unwanted memories have been shown to reduce the later recallability of the targets of suppression. Like other cognitive skills that benefit from practice, we hypothesized that memory control is similarly experience dependent, such that individuals with greater real-life experience at stopping retrieval would exhibit better inhibitory control over unwanted memories. Across two experiments, we found that college students reporting a greater history of trauma exhibited more suppression-induced forgetting of both negative and neutral memories than did those in a matched group who had reported experiencing little to no trauma. The association was especially evident on a test of suppression-induced forgetting involving independent retrieval cues that are designed to better isolate the effects of inhibitory control on memory. Participants reporting more trauma demonstrated greater generalized forgetting of suppressed material. These findings raise the possibility that, given proper training, individuals can learn to better manage intrusive experiences, and are broadly consistent with the view that moderate adversity can foster resilience later in life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).