Decreased inhibitory control of negative information in directed forgetting

Abstract

A great deal of evidence suggests that emotion enhances memory. Thus, it may be harder to forget emotional information. By means of fMRI, this question was investigated in the item-method directed forgetting paradigm. Behavioral results demonstrated that although all kinds of material could be forgotten, negative words showed reduced directed forgetting effect. At the neural level, the initial viewing of negative words elicited increased activities in inferior frontal gyrus and superior parietal lobule when contrasted with neutral words, which reflected the capture of attention by negative content. Forgetting instructions for negative and neutral words led to enhanced activations in frontal and parietal cortex, consistent with the engagement of an active inhibitory process. Surprisingly, whereas successful directed forgetting of neutral words elicited stronger activations in right middle frontal gyrus compared with incidental forgetting, no such activation was observed for negative words. The lack of activation for negative words may be due to an attentional bias in processing negative words, which may briefly interfere with the deployment of inhibitory control. The present findings are consistent with the engagement of an active forgetting mechanism that contributes to the item-method directed forgetting. However, evidence of impeded inhibitory control suggests that forgetting negative words is harder.

Keywords: Emotion; Forgetting; Inhibitory control; fMRI.