PROCESSES OF SUCCESSFUL INTENTIONAL FORGETTING

This article presents a framework, based on directed forgetting and social judgment research, for understanding compliance with overt instructions to disregard particular information. The success of intentional forgetting depends on how one originally encoded the to-be-forgotten information, the scope of the forget instruction, and the type of retrieval task done later. Memory-based processes of segregation and retrieval inhibition can lead to successful forgetting when subjects may forget all of the prior information. However, they are insufficient when subjects must forget only part of it. In this case, one ''forgets'' (i.e., limits expression of forget-cued information) by altering one's decision processes later. Successful intentional forgetting occurs only when one intentionally retrieves information from a particular learning episode, not when the task does not expressly require this (e.g., implicit memory tasks).