Long-term recognition and recall following directed forgetting.

Two experiments investigated long-term retention subsequent to directed forgetting. In Experiment 1, both recognition and cued recall were better for categories given remember (R) instructions than for categories given forget (F) instructions. A constant advantage of R items over F items persisted from an immediate test to a 1-wk delayed test. In Experiment 2, recognition of R items exceeded that of F items at retention intervals of 1 and 2 wk, the superiority of R items over F items again being constant across retention intervals. Presence or absence of study-instruction cues at the time of test in Experiment 2 did not differentially affect performance. An explanation is offered relating the directed forgetting effect to selective rehearsal during initial processing of the items and to the presence of instruction information stored with the individual items. The directed forgetting paradigm, introduced by Muther (1965) and usually dated from a study by Bjork, Laberge, and Legrand (1968), has become firmly established as a means of examining intentional forgetting, i.e., forgetting that the subject has been told to do (for reviews see Bjork, 1972; Epstein, 1972). Essentially, the directed forgetting paradigm involves instructing the subject to forget certain items (F items) and to remember the remaining items (R items) in a list. The subject is told that he will not subsequently be tested on F items, so that it is to his advantage to devote his processing only to the R items. Numerous studies (e.g., Bjork, 1970; Block, 1971) have shown that performance on R items in such a list is improved relative to performance on the same items in a list in which all items are to be remembered. Furthermore, when F A shorter version of Experiment 1 was reported at the meeting of the American Psychological