Making Memories Unavailable

Research from the past decades has shown that cuing and retrieval are not always beneficial for episodic memory and can also be detrimental. Prior work assumed that these detrimental effects are caused by retrieval blocking, in which cuing and retrieval strengthen material and the repeated involuntary sampling of the strengthened material hinders subsequent recall of nonstrengthened targets. Using a new experimental paradigm and an extended range of memory tests, recent research indicates that the detrimental effects of retrieval and cuing occur across a wide range of memory tests and are likely to be the result of inhibitory processes. These inhibitory processes impair the nonretrieved and noncue items' memory representation and make these items unavailable in memory. The recent results and the new theory are reviewed and discussed.

Resolving repression

The feuding factions of the memory wars, that is, those concerned with the validity of recovered memories versus those concerned with false memories, are unified by Erdelyi's theory of repression. Evidence shows suppression, inhibition, and retrieval blocking can have profound yet reversible effects on a memory's accessibility, and deserve as prominent a role in the recovered memory debate as evidence of false memories. Erdelyi's theory shows that both inhibitory and elaborative processes cooperate to keep unwanted memories out of consciousness.