Research Questions and Hypotheses

Question 1: What is the nature of the mood-memory relationship in terms of accessibility of negative memories?

Hypothesis 1: Non-dysphoric individuals will be slower than the dysphoric group in terms of the time it takes to recall a set of negative autobiographic events.

Question 2: Is RIF a superior paradigm to induce the forgetting effect even when participants are dysphoric?

Hypothesis 2: There will be a significant 3-way interaction among instruction, mood, and paradigm in which RIF will produce the largest forgetting effect for individuals who are dysphoric. The forgetting effect of DF will depend on whether participants are dysphoric.

Question 3: Does mood state differentially affect forgetting or does it depend on the specific forgetting paradigm employed?

Hypothesis 3: There will be a 2-way interaction between mood state and forgetting paradigm. That is, the effect of mood state on the amount of forgetting will depend on the paradigm used. It is expected that the

amount of forgetting will be highest for non-dysphoric individuals in the RIF paradigm compared to both non-dysphorics in the DF paradigm and dysphorics in the RIF and DF paradigms. It is also predicted that a DF effect will not be demonstrated for the dysphoric group compared to their non-dysphoric counterparts but that RIF will produce a significant

forgetting effect for the dysphoric group.

Question 4: Does the affect of mood state on the amount of negative memories forgotten depend on the instructions given?

Hypothesis 4: There will be a 2-way interaction between mood and instruction condition. The within^-subjects scores for amount of forgetting for the non-dysphoric group will be higher in the remember condition (RR and NRP) than in the forget condition (RF and Rp-) compared to the dysphoric group.

Question 5: Will the forgetting paradigms evidence a forgetting effect with RIF yielding a forgetting effect greater than DF?

Hypothesis 5: There will be a 2-way interaction between forgetting paradigm and instruction condition. That is, the amount forgetting

produced by each paradigm will depend on the instruction condition. The percentage of memories recalled will be highest in the remember

instruction condition (RR and NRP) compared to the forget instruction condition (RF and Rp-) and will be greater for RIF than either DF method.

Question 6: Are negative autobiographic events subject to induced-forgetting effects? Similar to the findings of Barnier et al. (2004) and Joslyn and Oakes (in press) that autobiographic memories are subject to both DF and RIF the

following prediction is made:

Hypothesis 6: There will be a main effect for instruction. The amount of memories recalled from the to-be remembered category will be higher than the amount of memories recalled from the to-be-forgotten category.

Question 7: Does mood state affect the efficacy of induced-forgetting of negative memories?

Hypothesis 7: Mood state will affect the amount of forgetting that occurs.

The amount of forgetting will be higher for the non-dysphoric group than the dysphoric group.

Question 8: Given the rebound effect commonly found in dysphoria and

depression, does the forgetting paradigm affect the amount of forgetting that will occur?

Hypothesis 8: There will be a main effect for forgetting paradigm. The forgetting paradigm used will affect the amount of forgetting that occurs.

The RIF paradigm will produce the greatest amount of forgetting compared to either DF-item or DF-list, which should produce similar amounts of forgetting.

Question 9: Will the same results comparing DF and RIF be found when the practice effect components (NRP and Rp+) of RIF are used in analyses instead of the forgetting effect components?

Question 10: What is the relationship between cognitive vulnerability factors in depression and an individual’s ability to generate and then to forget negative memories using induced-forgetting?

Hypothesis 9: Higher scores indicating poor perceived mental control over cognitions will be associated with faster memory generation time.

Hypothesis 10: High scores on self-report rumination will be associated with faster memory generation time.

Hypothesis 11: There will be a significant relationship between the mental control strategies and the amount of time to generate a set of memories.

No specific predictions are made as to which strategies are correlated with generation time or the direction of the association between strategy and generation time.

Hypothesis 12: Lower scores indicating poor perceived mental control over cognitions will be associated with lower forgetting rates.

Hypothesis 13: High scores on self-report rumination will be associated with lower rates of forgetting.

Hypothesis 14: There will be a significant relationship between the mental control strategies and the amount of forgetting. No specific predictions are

made as to which strategies are correlated with forgetting or the direction of the association between strategy and forgetting.

Hypothesis 15: Low scores indicating poor perceived mental control over cognitions will not benefit from retrieval practice in RIF.

Hypothesis 16: High scores on self-report rumination will be associated with no benefit of retrieval practice in RIF.

Hypothesis 17: There will be a significant relationship between the mental control strategies and the RIF practice effect. No specific predictions are made as to which strategies are correlated with practice or the direction of the association between strategy and the RIF practice effect.

CHAPTER 2: METHOD