The influence of directed forgetting on autobiographical memory: the role of development, individual differences, and repeated interviews.

Children often participate in the criminal justice system as victims of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and, in most cases, these children do not disclose the abuse for some time. During this period of non-disclosure, CSA victims may avoid thinking about or discussing their abuse experiences. Some scholars argue that this may lead to a directed forgetting (DF) effect, whereby later recall of the unrehearsed memories becomes more difficult, but limited empirical evidence exists to support this position. The present research employed an innovative application of the directed forgetting (DF) protocol to memory for a personally experienced event. Two hundred and forty-six participants from four age groups (grade one, grade three, grade five, and university) completed an activity session during which the experimenter issued list method DF instructions. Interviews consisting of executive functioning (EF), recall, and recognition tasks occurred six and seven days later. Findings demonstrated typical costs of the forget cue: Participants recalled fewer details from the first two activities when they were forget-cued than when they were remember-cued. However, follow-up tests revealed that only children in grade five and adults demonstrated these DF costs. Performance on EF tasks did not predict DF effects. In addition, those participants who recalled the activity session in the first interview did not demonstrate reduced DF costs during the second interview. This study marks the beginning of an important area of research; implications for the application of DF to memory for CSA are discussed in light of the present findings.