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Nishiyama S, O'Reilly RC, Saito S. Slowdown vs. breakdown of memory recall by retrieval stopping. Mem Cognit 2025:10.3758/s13421-025-01696-y. [PMID: 40021591 DOI: 10.3758/s13421-025-01696-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 02/07/2025] [Indexed: 03/03/2025]
Abstract
Think/No-Think studies have shown that people can prevent memories from coming up to their mind by explicitly attempting to not think of them. However, there is an important limitation in the measures typically used: binary recall vs. no-recall accuracy under a specific time deadline. In this study, we instead focused on recall latency with a longer response window to accommodate a wider range of recall latencies. We found in Experiment 1 that direct suppression in the standard No-Think condition had a relatively uniform, graded effect, slowing the recall process in such a way that more recall failures occur with a short deadline, but a longer deadline (10 s) allows for successful recall at rates comparable to a baseline condition. In Experiment 2, thought substitution also caused the slowdown of the recall despite still lower recall rate than a baseline in 10 s. These results suggest that memory recall is subject to graded impairment across all items in a consistent manner instead of the breakdown of recall among a subset of memories. For understanding forgetting by retrieval stopping, excessive use of recall rate should be avoided, and recall latency is a potential alternative.
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Affiliation(s)
- Satoru Nishiyama
- Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Sakyo-Ku, Kyoto, Yoshidahonmachi, 606-8501, Japan.
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 5-3-1 Kojimachi, Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo, 102-0083, Japan.
| | - Randall C O'Reilly
- Department of Psychology, University of California, 135 Young Hall, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA
- Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Grey Hall, 1544 Newton Court, Davis, CA, 95618, USA
- Department of Computer Science, University of California, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA
| | - Satoru Saito
- Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Sakyo-Ku, Kyoto, Yoshidahonmachi, 606-8501, Japan.
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Affiliation(s)
- Satoru Nishiyama
- Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Satoru Saito
- Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
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