Authors: Nishiyama, S., O’Reilly, R. C., & Saito, S.
Title: Slowdown vs. breakdown of memory recall by retrieval stopping
Journal(書誌情報）: Memory & Cognition
doi: 10.3758/s13421-025-01696-y
論文URL: https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-025-01696-y
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.
著者Contact先の email: nishiyama.satoru.2u[at]kyoto-u.ac.jp（[at]を@に変更してください。）
日本語によるコメント（オプション，200-300字で）Think/No-Think（TNT）パラダイムは、意図的忘却を検討する実験パラダイムです。「忘却」というと記憶が消去されるような印象や、そうでなくても思い出すことがかなり困難になる印象（論文における breakdown of memory recall）を与えると思います。先行研究で伝統的に採用されてきた再生率は、再生成績を成・否の2値に落とし込むため、「忘却」の特徴が先述のような印象に合致するのかどうかを検討できません。そこで本研究では再生潜時を測定し、TNTパラダイムにおける「忘却」の特徴について検討しました。2つの実験から、TNTパラダイムにおける「忘却」は再生が全体として遅くなるために生じていることが明らかになりました（slowdown of memory recall）。TNTパラダイムの範囲で実施しましたが、同様の検討は種々の記憶現象にも適用可能であると考えられます。
