What Is Directed Forgetting?

As a result of substantial research into complex human memory mechanisms; particularly within the last thirty years, the phenomenon of directed forgetting has been widely applied to both counselling professions; for suppression of previously traumatic events and also in general everyday use; as the ability to forget previous, unrequired information. Directed forgetting can be defined as an overall reduction in long-term memory, resulting from human demand to forget previously presented information used for learning purposes (Eysenck & Keane, 2015). Within the present essay, consideration towards influential, founding research of directed forgetting from MacLeod (1989, 2012) will be briefly discussed; underlining the hypothesis and key features. The main body will follow a comparison structure between two common explanations of Directed Forgetting; ‘Selective Rehearsal’ and ‘Active Suppression’, to which similarities vs. differences and strengths vs. weaknesses between findings, methodology, relevance, supporting evidence and theoretical perspectives will be demonstrated.

From previously conducted research on the basic directed forgetting paradigm, it has been inferred that two distinct methodological procedures exist for participants used in directed forgetting study.
Firstly, the item method; which involves demonstration of individual words …show more content…
14), three specific mechanisms were put forward to explain the ‘directed forgetting effect’. These were: ‘encoding processes’ focused upon a favouring tendency towards remember words within the selective rehearsal explanation, ‘storage and retrieval processes’ underlining prioritised selective search and finally ‘repression processes’ which follow the retrieval inhibition explanation that forgotten items are restricted from being re-exposed. Further consideration is now, more recently being provided in light of selective rehearsal and active suppression