You don't understand me! But, I do! Awareness of cross-generational differences in collective remembering of national historic events.

Collective memories refer to a group's shared representation of the past, which are slow to change over time. In this study, representative samples of American and German Younger Adults (YAs) and Older Adults (OAs) rated the emotional valence of 12 national historic events. Critically, both age groups were also asked to take on the perspective of the other: OAs imagined how YAs feel, whereas YAs imagined how OAs feel about the same events today.

Item-method directed forgetting and perceived truth of news headlines.

Research on item-method directed forgetting (IMDF) suggests that memories can be voluntarily forgotten. IMDF is however usually examined with relatively simple study materials, such as single words or pictures. In the present study, we examined voluntary forgetting of news headlines from (presumably) untrustworthy sources.

Drinking the waters of Lethe: Bringing voluntary choice into the study of voluntary forgetting.

The directed forgetting paradigm has long been used to test whether humans can voluntarily choose to forget learned information. However, to date, nearly all directed forgetting paradigms have involved a forced-choice paradigm, in which the participants are instructed about which learned information they should forget. While studies have repeatedly shown that this directed forgetting does lead to a decreased ability to later remember the information, it is still unclear whether these effects would be present if participants were allowed to, of their own accord, choose which information they wanted to forget.

The role of sleep for memory consolidation: does sleep protect memories from retroactive interference?

Numerous studies suggest that sleep benefits memory. A major theoretical question in this area is however if sleep does so by passively shielding memories from interference that arises during wakefulness or by actively stabilizing and strengthening memories. A key finding by Ellenbogen et al.

Joint contributions of collaborative facilitation and social contagion to the development of shared memories in social groups.

Social interactions can shape our memories. Here, we examined two well-established effects of collaborative remembering on individual memory: collaborative facilitation for initially studied and social contagion with initially unstudied information. Participants were tested in groups of three.

List-method directed forgetting: Do critical findings generalize from short to long retention intervals?

People can purposefully forget information that has become irrelevant, as is demonstrated in list-method directed forgetting (LMDF). In this task, participants are cued to intentionally forget an already studied list (list 1) before encoding a second list (list 2); this induces forgetting of the first-list items. Most research on LMDF has been conducted with short retention intervals, but very recent studies indicate that such directed forgetting can be lasting.

How do we remember public events? Pioneering a new area of everyday memory research.

Although most of us consume news reports about public events day by day, little is known about how memories of public events are remembered in everyday life. Across three studies, we examined voluntary (deliberately retrieved) and involuntary (spontaneously arising) public event memories by directly comparing them with voluntary and involuntary personal event memories. In particular, we examined the relative frequency of public event memories, correlations with individual differences measures, the emotional tone of remembered public events, phenomenological characteristics associated with remembering, and functions of public event memories.

Would you like to learn more? Retrieval practice plus feedback can increase motivation to keep on studying.

Retrieval practice can boost memory and long-term retention. The present research suggests that it may also benefit another domain that is critical for learning, namely motivation. In three experiments, subjects studied Swedish vocabulary by means of retrieval practice - with or without corrective feedback - or restudy.

Social interactions can simultaneously enhance and distort memories: Evidence from a collaborative recognition task.

Social interactions can strengthen memories, but they can also contaminate them, for instance, when individuals integrate misinformation from social sources into their own memories. In two experiments, we examined such social contagion in a novel recognition-based collaboration task. Groups of three subjects studied lists of words in isolation, but unbeknownst to subjects, only half of these words were shared by the whole group.

Competing national memories of World War II.

We assessed the knowledge of 1,338 people from 11 countries (8 former Allied and 3 former Axis) about World War II. When asked what percentage their country contributed to the war effort, across Allied countries, estimates totaled 309%, and Axis nations' estimates came to 140%. People in 4 nations claimed more than 50% responsibility for their country (Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States).

Retrieval-induced forgetting in a social context: Do the same mechanisms underlie forgetting in speakers and listeners?

Selectively retrieving details from memory can result in forgetting related information, a finding known as retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). The effect has mostly been examined in individuals, but RIF can also be socially transmitted and arise in listeners who are exposed to a speaker's selective memory retrieval. Whether within-individual RIF (WI-RIF) in speakers and socially shared RIF (SS-RIF) in listeners arise on the basis of the same cognitive mechanisms is unclear, however.

A (Preliminary) Recipe for Obtaining a Testing Effect in Preschool Children: Two Critical Ingredients.

The testing effect refers to the finding that retrieval of previously learned information improves retention of that information more than restudy practice does. While there is some evidence that the testing effect can already arise in preschool children when a particular experimental task is employed, it remains unclear whether, for this age group, the effect exists across a wider range of tasks. To examine the issue, the present experiments sought to determine the potential roles of retrieval-practice and final-test formats, and of immediate feedback during retrieval practice for the testing effect in preschoolers.

Sleep reduces the testing effect-But not after corrective feedback and prolonged retention interval.

Retrieval practice relative to restudy of learned material typically attenuates time-dependent forgetting. A recent study examining this testing effect across 12-h delays filled with nocturnal sleep versus daytime wakefulness, however, showed that sleep directly following encoding benefited recall of restudied but not of retrieval practiced items, which reduced, and even eliminated, the testing effect after sleep (Bäuml, Holterman, & Abel, 2014). The present study investigated, in 4 experiments, whether this modulating role of sleep for the testing effect is influenced by two factors that have previously been shown to increase the testing effect: corrective feedback and prolonged retention intervals.

The testing effect in a social setting: Does retrieval practice benefit a listener?

Retrieval practice boosts retention relative to other study strategies like restudying, a finding known as the testing effect. In 3 experiments, the authors investigated testing in social contexts. Subjects participated in pairs and engaged in restudy and retrieval practice of vocabulary pairs.

Collaborative remembering revisited: Study context access modulates collaborative inhibition and later benefits for individual memory.

Collaborating groups typically show reduced recall relative to nominal groups, i.e., to the cumulated non-redundant recall of the same number of people remembering in isolation-a finding termed collaborative inhibition.

Comparing the testing effect under blocked and mixed practice: The mnemonic benefits of retrieval practice are not affected by practice format.

The act of retrieving information modifies memory in critical ways. In particular, testing-effect studies have demonstrated that retrieval practice (compared to restudy or to no testing) benefits long-term retention and protects from retroactive interference. Although such testing effects have previously been demonstrated in both between- and within-subjects manipulations of retrieval practice, it is less clear whether one or the other testing format is most beneficial on a final test.

Retrieval practice can eliminate list method directed forgetting.

It has recently been shown that retrieval practice can reduce memories' susceptibility to interference, like retroactive and proactive interference. In this study, we therefore examined whether retrieval practice can also reduce list method directed forgetting, a form of intentional forgetting that presupposes interference. In each of two experiments, subjects successively studied two lists of items.

Collective memory: a new arena of cognitive study.

Collective memory refers to recollection of events shared by a group. The topic has been of central interest in the humanities, but recently researchers have begun empirical studies. Topics such as how people remember a war or how quickly Americans forget their presidents can be studied objectively.

Selective memory retrieval in social groups: When silence is golden and when it is not.

Previous research has shown that the selective remembering of a speaker and the resulting silences can cause forgetting of related, but unmentioned information by a listener (Cuc, Koppel, & Hirst, 2007). Guided by more recent work that demonstrated both detrimental and beneficial effects of selective memory retrieval in individuals, the present research explored the effects of selective remembering in social groups when access to the encoding context at retrieval was maintained or impaired. In each of three experiments, selective retrieval by the speaker impaired recall of the listener when access to the encoding context was maintained, but it improved recall of the listener when context access was impaired.

Sleep can reduce the testing effect: it enhances recall of restudied items but can leave recall of retrieved items unaffected.

The testing effect refers to the finding that retrieval practice in comparison to restudy of previously encoded contents can improve memory performance and reduce time-dependent forgetting. Naturally, long retention intervals include both wake and sleep delay, which can influence memory contents differently. In fact, sleep immediately after encoding can induce a mnemonic benefit, stabilizing and strengthening the encoded contents.

The roles of delay and retroactive interference in retrieval-induced forgetting.

When subjects study items from different categories and then repeatedly retrieve some of the items from some of the categories, retrieval practice typically improves recall of the practiced items but impairs recall of related but unpracticed items, relative to control items from unpracticed categories. Here, we report the results of three experiments, in which we examined practiced and unpracticed items' delay-induced forgetting (Exp. 1) and their susceptibility to retroactive interference (Exps.

Sleep can reduce proactive interference.

Sleep has repeatedly been connected to processes of memory consolidation. While extensive research indeed documents beneficial effects of sleep on memory, little is yet known about the role of sleep for interference effects in episodic memory. Although two prior studies reported sleep to reduce retroactive interference, no sleep effect has previously been found for proactive interference.

Sleep can eliminate list-method directed forgetting.

Recent work suggests a link between sleep and memory consolidation, indicating that sleep in comparison to wakefulness stabilizes memories. However, relatively little is known about how sleep affects forgetting. Here we examined whether sleep influences directed forgetting, the finding that people can intentionally forget obsolete memories when cued to do so.

Retrieval-induced forgetting, delay, and sleep.

Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) refers to the finding that retrieval of a subset of previously studied material can cause forgetting of related unpractised material. Prior work on the role of delay between practice and test for RIF reported mixed results. Whereas some studies found RIF to be a relatively transient phenomenon, others found RIF to persist over time.