On the suppression of unpleasant visual memories

Abstract

In Anderson and Green’s (2001) Think/No-Think paradigm, subjects first learn to associate cue-target pairs and are then instructed to recall or to suppress the memory of the target when viewing the cue. A number of previous studies have found that subjects exhibited an impaired recall of previously suppressed targets. However, this effect tends to be small and sometimes is not found at all. Therefore, the paradigm was modified in the current study to enhance its effects and thus to better examine what it is capable of. In spite of this, no effects emerged. The targets that were paired with a recall instruction were not even remembered better, which makes the results of this study difficult to interpret.