Explicit Omission in Mnemonic Activity

The aim of the study was to explore the possibilities of active information selection in memory, as well as to examine factors influencing the effectiveness of targeted information omission when performing mnemonic tasks. Two experiments were carried out with 98 participants. The bystimulus method for directed forgetting was used in conjunction with the overlearning method. The findings indicate that the presence of additional set of stimuli in the material for memorization does not affect the effectiveness of overlearning, there is no interference between disregarded and memorized items. When the task of overlearning was simplified and task of omission was made more complex by adding a structure to the presented material we observed the opposite effect. We conclude that explicit omission is possible when conscious control is aimed at a more difficult task and does not monitor the task of disregard.

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