Forgetting as an Active Process: Attentional Withdrawal Following a Forget Instruction

Intentional forgetting, commonly studied using a directed forgetting paradigm, can disrupt memory performance. Beyond verbal report, attenuation of physiological fear responding to emotional associations has also been demonstrated following a simple instruction to forget. Discussion nevertheless persists about the mechanisms underlying this directed forgetting effect, and, by extension, the active or passive nature of forgetting. In recent years, the body of research suggesting that forgetting is an active process has expanded, with attentional withdrawal among its proposed mechanisms. In the current study, we demonstrate that both verbal memory and physiological fear responding to emotional stimuli were disrupted due to the instruction to forget, using a non-differential conditioning paradigm. Using an inhibition of return task, we also show that attention was withdrawn more vigorously from items accompanied by an instruction to forget, and that the magnitude of this withdrawal effect was correlated with the directed forgetting effect across individuals. Our findings corroborate the proposition of stronger attentional withdrawal upon the presentation of a forget instruction, and thus the involvement of active attentional withdrawal in directed forgetting of emotional memories. Future research should further investigate these memory editing protocols and consider their potential for clinical translation.