Gender differences in socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting: Based on the perspective of relational motives

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2022, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (1) : 142-148.

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PDF(459 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2022, Vol. 45 ›› Issue (1) : 142-148.

Gender differences in socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting: Based on the perspective of relational motives

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Abstract

In our daily life, people have plenty of opportunities to share their memories of past experience or knowledge with others. In such conversation, the phenomenon which, due to conscious or unconscious selective retrieval of speakers, listeners concurrently and covertly forget the unmentioned but relevant memories, is called socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting (SS-RIF). Based on the perspective of relational motive, the current study investigated the memory performance of different gender groups in experimental task, in addition, the presence of the speaker or not was manipulated in this study to eliminate the possible influence of other gender-related cognitive factors (such as inhibitory control) on individual memory performance. We adopted a 2 (gender: female, male) × 2 (interactive level: the presence of the speaker, the absence of the speaker) × 4 (item type: Rp+, Rp–, Nrp+, Nrp–) mixed design, in which gender and interactive level were between-participants design, while item type was within-participants design. The dependent variable was the correct recall proportion in the final recall test. The formal experiment consists of four phases: learning phase, interactive retrieval-practice phase, interference phase, and final recall phase. In order to let each participant play the role of speaker and listener respectively, two rounds were carried out in the interactive retrieval-practice phase. A total of 132 healthy volunteers participated in the experiment. All participants were randomly assigned to different interactive level conditions. At the end of the formal experiment, Operation-Word Span Task (OWST) was used to measure participants’ working memory capacity. Participants also be asked to fill out the Group Preference Scale (GPS) and the self-evaluation scale. It was found that there was no difference in working memory capacity between female and male participants. In addition, regardless of gender and interactive level, when participants acted as listeners, the correct recall rates of Rp+ were significantly higher than Nrp+. However, socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting only appeared on female listeners in the presence of the speaker condition, male participants in both interactive level conditions arose no such effect. Moreover, the results also showed that in the presence of the speaker condition, female participants were more engaged in the current tasks than male ones. The results above indicated that, regardless of gender and interactive level, listeners presented the phenomenon of classical retrieval-induced enhancement. In addition, female listeners showed the effect of socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting only in the condition of the presence of the speaker, and male listeners didn’t in both interactive level conditions. The results of the present study revealed gender difference in socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting and the influence of relational motives in social interactions on socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting, and furthermore provided new evidence for motivational-cognition model in the field of social memory.

Key words

socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting / gender difference / relational motives / covert retrieval / the presence of speaker

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Gender differences in socially shared retrieval-induced forgetting: Based on the perspective of relational motives[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2022, 45(1): 142-148
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