THE ROLE OF SLEEP AND EMOTION ON DIRECTED FORGETTING

Directed forgetting is the process of actively trying to forget specific information. Sleep selectively improves directed remembering, without enhancing consolidation for information was directed to be forgotten. Emotional information is also prioritized for consolidation across sleep. This study aimed to determine whether sleep-enhanced directed forgetting could be observed for emotional information. Participants were shown 100 words on a screen. Following each word, a green “R,” indicated a word to be remembered, whereas a red “F” indicated a word to be forgotten. Half of the words were negatively valenced, and half were neutral. After encoding participants completed an immediate recognition task in which they were presented with 100 words (25 previously observed “Remember” words, 25 previously observed “Forget” words, and 50 foil words). Following a 12-hour delay, participants were asked to freely recall any of the words they saw on the original list. Of the total 26 participants, 10 were in the wake group, and 16 were in the sleep group. In immediate recognition, “remember” words were significantly better recognized than “forget” words (F(1,24)=15.578, p=.001). There was no main effect of emotion, nor a main effect of sleep group. There was, however, a significant interaction between memory and emotion (F(1,24)=14.051, p=.001). Negative remember words were significantly better recognized, and neutral words were better forgotten. Following the delay, remember words were significantly better recalled than forget words (F(1,24)=23.763, p<0.001). Negative words were also better recalled (F(1,24)=3.96, p=0.05). However, there was no effect of sleep on memory (F(1,24)=0.572, p=0.454). Individuals in the wake group made significantly more errors than the sleep group (F(1,24)=10.999, p=0.003), and errors tended to be more negative (F(1,24)=27.969, p<0.001). This work further replicated the impact of directed forgetting. In addition, while this work did show a stronger memory for negative words, this study failed to demonstrate a role for sleep in this interaction. Sleep did, however, protect the participant from errors in recall. Overall, improved understanding of directed forgetting of emotional information could benefit individuals with emotional trauma. N/A