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“I Never Forget a Face, but in Your Case I’ll Be Glad to Make an Exception”: Intentional Forgetting of Emotional Faces

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Chelsea K Quinlan at Dalhousie University
Chelsea K Quinlan
Tracy L. Taylor
Tracy L. Taylor
Tracy L. Taylor
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Abstract

The current study used the item-method directed forgetting paradigm to determine whether there are limits on the ability to intentionally forget angry faces. During the study phase, faces were presented, 1 at a time, each followed by an instruction to remember or forget. Following the presentation of all faces, participants performed a yes-no recognition test. In 2 experiments that varied only the presentation duration of the face (500 ms vs. 1,000 ms), we observed an overall directed forgetting effect, with greater recognition of faces studied with remember rather than forget instructions; the magnitude of this effect did not vary with emotional expression. We interpret these results in light of the proposal that priority processing of angry faces benefits the speed of forming an enduring long-term memory trace rather than increasing the strength of that trace. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
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“I Never Forget a Face, but in Your Case I’ll Be Glad to Make an
Exception”: Intentional Forgetting of Emotional Faces
Chelsea K. Quinlan and Tracy L. Taylor
Dalhousie University
The current study used the item-method directed forgetting paradigm to determine whether there are
limits on the ability to intentionally forget angry faces. During the study phase, faces were presented, 1
at a time, each followed by an instruction to remember or forget. Following the presentation of all faces,
participants performed a yes-no recognition test. In 2 experiments that varied only the presentation
duration of the face (500 ms vs. 1,000 ms), we observed an overall directed forgetting effect, with greater
recognition of faces studied with remember rather than forget instructions; the magnitude of this effect
did not vary with emotional expression. We interpret these results in light of the proposal that priority
processing of angry faces benefits the speed of forming an enduring long-term memory trace rather than
increasing the strength of that trace.
Keywords: intentional forgetting, directed forgetting, emotion, faces, memory
An angry expression on the face of a conspecific signals a
contest for dominance and threatens the observer with the potential
for social displacement and physical harm. The immediate well-
being and long-term survival of the observer therefore depends on
the ability to quickly orient to and assess the threat situation and to
engage a fight-or-flight response if danger is imminent (see Lang,
1995). This implies that an evolutionary advantage should be
conferred on individuals for whom angry faces are processed
expeditiously (see Öhman, 1986).
There is considerable evidence that angry faces receive priority
processing in human observers. Consider the following as cases in
point. Subsequent to aversive conditioning, angry faces evoke
larger galvanic skin responses and are more resistant to extinction
than happy faces, even when backward masking limits conscious
awareness of the conditioned stimulus (e.g., Morris, Öhman, &
Dolan, 1998). Event-related potentials (ERPs) reveal enhanced
early posterior negativity as well as late positive potentials, con-
sistent with enhanced perceptual processing of angry compared
with neutral and happy faces (Schupp et al., 2004). Behaviourally,
angry face targets in a visual array of neutral faces produce
shallower search functions than vice versa, sometimes interpreted
as evidence that angry faces “pop-out” (Eastwood, Smilek, &
Merickle, 2001;Fox et al., 2000;Hansen & Hansen, 1988; how-
ever, see Becker, Anderson, Mortensen, Neufeld, & Neel, 2011;
Purcell & Stewart, 2010). This relatively shallow search function
for angry faces is accompanied by earlier onset and larger
amplitude of the N2pc, a component of the ERP waveform that
is associated with selective attention (Feldmann-Wüstefeld,
Schmidt-Daffy, & Schubö, 2011). Indeed, compared with neutral
faces, attention is biased toward the location of angry faces in the
early intervals following their onset (Cooper & Langton, 2006; see
also Schmidt, Belopolsky, & Theeuwes, 2012). In addition to
attracting early attention, angry faces also slow its disengagement:
When faces serve as the imperative signal at fixation to direct
saccades to the left or right, these movements are initiated more
slowly when the face displays an angry expression than when it
displays a neutral or happy expression (Belopolsky, Devue, &
Theeuwes, 2011; see also Fox, Russo, & Dutton, 2002).
Threat-related stimuli (e.g., angry facial expressions) may be
simultaneously processed through two cortical visual processing
routes (see Barrett & Bar, 2009). The first route, which involves
the dorsal visual stream and orbitofrontal cortex, provides an initial
threat assessment and may account for the fact that angry faces can
exert control over attentional orienting (e.g., Mogg & Bradley,
1999), responding (e.g., conditioned responses; Mineka & Öhman,
2002), and subsequent decision making even when they are
masked to restrict conscious awareness of their presentation (e.g.,
Almeida, Pajtas, Mahon, Nakayama, & Caramazza, 2013). Con-
sistent with this hypothesis, positron emission tomography shows
an enhanced response in right orbitofrontal cortex that correlates
with the intensity of the angry expression and that is also impli-
cated in animal studies of behavioural extinction and reversal
(Blair, Morris, Frith, Perrett, & Dolan, 1999). The early warning
signal raised by rapid unconscious processing in this stream is
presumed to increase the observer’s arousal and enhance response
readiness. It further marks regions of interest for controlled pro-
cessing through the second route, which involves the ventral visual
stream (e.g., Vuilleumier & Schwartz, 2001).
Chelsea K. Quinlan and Tracy L. Taylor, Department of Psychology and
Neuroscience, Dalhousie University.
We thank Carl Helmick for designing the custom software used to
randomize the items and our undergraduate participants for volunteering
their time to contribute to this research. Funding for this study was
provided by the Natural Sciences Engineering and Research Council of
Canada through a Vanier Scholarship to Chelsea K. Quinlan and a Dis-
covery Grant to Tracy L. Taylor.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Chelsea
K. Quinlan, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Dalhousie Uni-
versity, 1355 Oxford Street, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3H 4R2 Canada.
E-mail: Chelsea.Quinlan@dal.ca
Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale © 2014 Canadian Psychological Association
2014, Vol. 68, No. 3, 212–221 1196-1961/14/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cep0000024
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... It includes two phases: during the study phase, an item is presented to participants at a time, followed by instruction of "remember" or "forget"; during the test phase, participants are asked to respond whether the item has been presented during the study phase or not. The items can be words, pictures, or sounds [5][6][7][8][9][10]. DF is symbolized by the higher recognition rate of items followed by "remember" instruction than those followed by "forget" instruction. ...
... For example, Hauswald et al. found that DF occurred for neutral pictures but not for negative pictures [6]; Bailey & Chapman reported an attenuated DF for positive and negative words than neutral words [5]; Otani et al. found that DF occurred for positive and neutral pictures but not for negative pictures [17]; Marchewka et al. found that DF occurred equally for disgustful, fearful, sad, and neutral pictures [15]; Quinlan & Taylor found that DF occurred for happy, angry, and neutral faces [7]. From our point of view, there might be several possibilities to explain the different conclusions of the effect of emotion drawn from previous studies [5][6][7][14][15][16][17]. First, the types of items were different from study to study. ...
... It has been shown that the cognitive processing mechanisms of DF between pictures and words might be different [18]. Also, emotional faces with specific facial features and social values (e.g., angry faces signify potential threats) might own different affective characteristics from emotional words or pictures [7,8]. Second, the emotions of items were defined differently. ...
Effects of emotion and sex difference on item-method directed forgetting
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2023
It is crucial to remember or forget others' faces in daily life. People can intentionally forget things they wish to forget, a phenomenon called directed forgetting (DF). This study examined the effects of stimuli's emotions and sex differences in participants and stimuli on DF. We used happy and angry faces as the items in a typical item-method paradigm and conducted three behavioral experiments. In Experiment 1, we recruited 60 participants to examine how emotions of stimuli and sex differences in participants and stimuli affected DF. In Experiment 2, we recruited 60 female participants and manipulated the durations of items presented during the study phase to examine whether the selective rehearsal theory was held. In Experiment 3, we recruited 50 female participants and attached recognition cues to the items presented during the test phase to examine whether the inhibitory control theory was held. We treated the sex of participants in Experiment 1, the durations of items presented during the study phase in Experiment 2 as the between-subject factors, and emotion and sex of stimuli as the with-subject factors. We conducted the mixed-design ANOVA for corrected hit rate, sensitivity, and bias based on the signal detection theory. As a result, we found that DF occurred easily for male participants, whereas not for female participants because of females' superior memorial performances and stronger sensitivities. Furthermore, we found that female participants owned the best and worst recognition rates for angry female faces and happy male faces, respectively. Our results supported the selective rehearsal theory, suggesting manipulations during the study phase had the potential to help females forget what they wished to forget. We presumed that psychologists and therapists should pay attention to the roles of sex difference in twofold, self and others, when studying people's memory and forgetting. Furthermore, the sensitivity of self and the emotion of others should be considered as well.
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... Regarding item-method DF of faces with emotional expressions, Quinlan and Taylor (2014) found equivalent DF effects for happy, angry and neutral faces across two experiments that varied stimulus exposure time. Tay and Yang (2017), by contrast, reported angry faces to be more resistant to DF than happy faces. ...
... Together, Tay and Yang's (2017) and Corenblum et al. (2020) findings indicate that faces with negative expressions may be harder to forget than neutral of positive expressions which would be in line with many other findings on DF of emotionally negative stimuli (see Hall et al., 2021). On the other hand, two experiments by Quinlan and Taylor (2014) challenge this assumption, calling for further research on DF of negative, and particularly angry faces. ...
... They demonstrate that, within one study, different neural mechanisms can give rise to the itemmethod DF effect. Behaviorally, data are in line with the findings by Quinlan and Taylor (2014) who found similar magnitude item-method DF for angry and neutral faces. Tay and Yang (2017), by contrast, reported angry faces to be more resistant to directed forgetting than happy or neutral ones. ...
Different ways to forget: Electrophysiological mechanisms underlying item-method directed forgetting of angry and neutral faces
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2022
Emotional stimuli, including faces, receive preferential processing and are consequently better remembered than neutral stimuli. Therefore, they may also be more resistant to intentional forgetting. The present study investigates the behavioral and electrophysiological consequences of instructions to selectively remember or forget angry and neutral faces. In an item-method directed forgetting experiment, angry and neutral faces were randomly presented to 25 student participants (4 males). Each face was followed by an instruction to either forget or remember it and the participants’ EEG was recorded. Later, recognition memory was unexpectedly tested for all items. Behaviorally, both hit and false alarm rates were higher for angry alike than for neutral faces. Directed forgetting occurred for neutral and angry faces as reflected in a reduction of both recognition accuracy and response bias. Event-related potentials revealed a larger late positive potential (LPP, 450 – 700 ms) for angry than for neutral faces during face presentation and, in line with selective rehearsal of remember items, a larger LPP following remember than forget cues. Forget cues generally elicited a larger frontal N2 (280 – 400 ms) than remember cues, in line with the forget instruction eliciting conflict monitoring and inhibition. Selectively following angry faces, a larger cue-evoked P2 (180 – 280 ms) was observed. Notably, forget cues following angry faces elicited a larger late frontal positivity (450 - 700 ms) potentially signaling conflict resolution. Thus, whereas both angry and neutral faces are subject to directed forgetting, on a neural level, different mechanisms underlie the effect. While directed forgetting for neutral faces may be achieved primarily by selective rehearsal, directed forgetting of angry faces involves an additional late frontal positivity, likely reflecting higher cognitive demands imposed by forgetting angry faces.
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... Becker et al. (2014) found that the angrier faces were identified more quickly than the slightly angry or neutral faces. Quinlan and Taylor (2014) used the directed forgetting paradigm to investigate differences in recognition memory between angry, neutral, and happy faces. Participants viewed a study list containing faces of each emotion, and were unaware they would be tested on the forget-cued faces. ...
... Based on the results of Becker et al. (2014) and Tay and Yang (2017), angry faces were chosen as a focus in the present study to compare to neutrally valenced faces. The results of Quinlan andTaylor (2014) andD'Argembeau et al. (2003) create some confusion regarding recognition memory of emotional stimuli, considering both studies found no effect. Therefore, the present study aims to clear up this ambiguity between angry and neutral emotional stimuli, DIRECTED FORGETTING OF EMOTIONAL FACES 6 and adds to the current body of knowledge by examining memory for emotional expressions instead of identity in a more direct way. ...
... Based on the results of Becker et al. (2014) and Tay and Yang (2017), angry faces were chosen as a focus in the present study to compare to neutrally valenced faces. The results of Quinlan andTaylor (2014) andD'Argembeau et al. (2003) create some confusion regarding recognition memory of emotional stimuli, considering both studies found no effect. Therefore, the present study aims to clear up this ambiguity between angry and neutral emotional stimuli, DIRECTED FORGETTING OF EMOTIONAL FACES 6 and adds to the current body of knowledge by examining memory for emotional expressions instead of identity in a more direct way. ...
Undergraudate Thesis: Directed Forgetting of Emotional Faces
Thesis
Full-text available
  • Apr 2022
We examined recogniton memory for emotional expressions using the directed forgetting paradigm. Participants were presented with a list of faces with either an angry or neutral expression. In the test phase, participants were presented with a studied face, and a face of the same identitiy showing another emotion. This way, expression was tested directly and identity memory was kept consistent.
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... A handful of studies have examined DF of faces and showed that participants can intentionally forget faces when instructed to do so (e.g., Goernert et al., 2011;Metzger, 2011;Quinlan & Taylor, 2014;Reber et al., 2002;Tay & Yang, 2017;Wang et al., 2019). Interestingly, some facial attributes were shown to moderate the degree to which faces are susceptible to DF (e.g., Metzger, 2011;Quinlan et al., 2010;Tay & Yang, 2017). ...
... Interestingly, some facial attributes were shown to moderate the degree to which faces are susceptible to DF (e.g., Metzger, 2011;Quinlan et al., 2010;Tay & Yang, 2017). For example, angry faces were found to be more resistant to DF than happy faces (Tay & Yang, 2017), although another study reported inconsistent results (Quinlan & Taylor, 2014). In addition, Metzger (2011) found that distinctive faces (i.e., faces receiving a high score on a "distinctiveness" scale) are more resistant to intentional forgetting compared to typical faces. ...
... The data were collected during the Fall of 2015, and Spring and Fall semesters of 2016. Our sample size was based on studies that investigated DF with another variable of interest (e.g., Metzger, 2011;Otani et al., 2012;Quinlan & Taylor, 2014). Those studies typically recruited participants ranging in number from 20 to 40. ...
Can intentional forgetting reduce the cross-race effect in memory?
Article
  • Apr 2022
Across three studies, we utilized an item-method directed forgetting (DF) procedure with faces of different races to investigate the magnitude of intentional forgetting of own-race versus other-race faces. All three experiments shared the same procedure but differed in the number of faces presented. Participants were presented with own-race and other-race faces, each followed by a remember or forget memory instruction, and subsequently received a recognition test for all studied faces. We obtained a robust cross-race effect (CRE) but did not find a DF effect in Experiment 1. Experiments 2 and 3 used shorter study and test lists and obtained a significant DF effect along with significant CRE, but no interaction between face type and memory instruction. The results suggest that own-race and other-race faces are equally susceptible to DF. The results are discussed in terms of the theoretical explanations for CRE and their implications for DF.
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... Some studies have found no difference in the magnitude of DF for emotional and neutral words (e.g., Berger et al., 2018;Gallant & Yang, 2014), whereas others have found a smaller or non-significant effect for emotional words (e.g., Bailey & Chapman, 2012;Yang et al., 2016) or sentences (Lee & Hsu, 2013). Studies using emotionally valenced images have produced similarly mixed results, with some showing no difference in the magnitude of DF for emotional and neutral images (e.g., Quinlan & Taylor, 2014;Taylor et al., 2018;Yang et al., 2012), and others showing a smaller or non-significant effect for emotional images (Hauswald et al., 2010;Nowicka et al., 2011;Zwissler et al., 2011). ...
... In addition to differences in DF across valences, each valence condition also demonstrated better memory for R compared to F items. This is consistent with previous research observing DF for emotional items (Gallant et al., 2018;Quinlan & Taylor, 2014;Taylor et al., 2018). Although past work would have predicted greater DF for recall than recognition (e.g., Titz & Verhaeghen, 2010), the current analysis demonstrated weak support for this claim in the neutral condition. ...
Emotional memories are (usually) harder to forget: A meta-analysis of the item-method directed forgetting literature
Article
  • Apr 2021
The current meta-analysis explored whether emotional memories are less susceptible to item-method directed forgetting than neutral memories. Basic analyses revealed superior memory for remember (R) than forget (F) items in both the neutral, M = 19.6%, CI 95% [16.1, 23.1], and the emotional, M = 15.1%, CI 95% [12.4, 17.7], conditions. Directed forgetting in either valence condition was larger for (a) words than for other stimuli; (b) recall than recognition tests; (c) studies that used recall prior to recognition testing; (d) shorter lists; and (e) studies that included buffer items. Direct comparison of the magnitude of the directed forgetting effect across neutral and emotional conditions within studies revealed relatively diminished directed forgetting of emotional items compared to neutral items, with an average difference of 4.2%, CI 95% [2.0, 6.4]. However, the nature of this finding varied broadly across studies, meaning that whether-and to what degree-emotional memories are more resilient than neutral memories likely depends on the methodological features of the study in question. Moderator analyses revealed larger differences (a) in studies for which the emotional items were more arousing than the neutral items, and (b) when buffer items were included. Together, these findings suggest that emotional memories are often more resilient to intentional forgetting than neutral memories, although further research is necessary to characterize the circumstances under which these differences emerge.
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... In laboratory-based directed forgetting studies, people have an impressive ability to exert encoding and retrieval control over many different kinds of stimuli -including faces [106][107][108] , un-nameable visual symbols 109 , multicoloured spiral images 50 , complex pictures 31,110 , videos 43,49 and autobiographical events 111,112 -but this control is not absolute. As noted above, some material -like pictures versus words or words read aloud versus silently -'stand out' in memory owing to their distinctive encoding and thereby frustrate attempts to exert control over encoding 104 . ...
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... Although the focus of the present study was to model directed forgetting for word stimuli, directed forgetting effects have been observed with a variety of different stimuli, including phone numbers (Gottlob et al., 2006), symbols (Hourihan et al., 2009), faces (Goernert et al., 2011;Quinlan & Taylor, 2014), and photographs (Ahmad et al., 2019;Taylor et al., 2018). Notably, Ahmad et al. ...
A Computational Model of Item-Based Directed Forgetting
Article
Full-text available
  • Apr 2022
Montagliani and Hockley (2019) presented evidence that item-method directed forgetting not only leads to worse recognition of forget-cued targets than remember-cued targets but also better rejection of foils associated with forget-cued targets than remember-cued targets. Based on that result, they proposed that participants elaboratively encode more category-level information about R-cued targets. We present a retrieval-based explanation of the result within an instance-based memory model. The model imports word representations from two distributional semantic models, latent semantic analysis (LSA) and random permutation model (RPM), into an instance-based model of memory, MINERVA 2. The model reproduced Montagliani and Hockley's results without requiring assumptions about elaborated encoding of category-level information at study. The simulations demonstrate that whereas Montagliani and Hockley's findings are consistent with an account grounded in elaborated encoding of words at study, the results do not force that conclusion. Instead, better encoding of remember-cued targets at study establishes the conditions for retrieval-time effects at test to produce a corresponding influence on false recognition for category-related foils. Our model can be used as a formal tool to think about and study the incidental consequences of item directed forgetting in recognition memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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... The reason why Song's study (2013) showed an attention bias to negative emotional faces might be because of different kind of materials. Negative faces, such as angry faces, could be processed more quickly than happy faces (Quinlan and Taylor, 2014). ...
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Psychological resilience is consisted of social resources and protective factors for individuals against negative effects, and can influence the process of meta-cognition of individuals in response to emotion feelings. However, individuals with high or low resilience may produce various emotional experiences when facing the same events. According to an emotional input–output model, the different impacts of resilience on emotional experience may be caused during the process of receiving or disengaging stages. In order to address this problem, three experiments were conducted in the present study. The Experiment 1 was designed to explore whether the positive and negative emotions were associated with higher or lower levels of resilience. The aims of Experiments 2 and 3 were to test at which stages the different emotional experiences were caused by high or low resilience of individuals. The results showed that individuals with low resilience were more likely to feel more negative and less positive emotions, and resilience was significantly negatively associated with anxiety or depression. However, there was no difference in the stage of receiving emotional information between high and low resilient individuals, but differ on their ability of disengagement from emotional information, the individuals with high resilience disengaged from both positive and negative emotional information much faster. These findings were discussed in the context of different theories about the relationship between resilience and emotional experience.
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