This study embedded attentional cues in the study phase of an item-method directed forgetting task. We used an unpredictive onset cue (Experiment 1), a predictive onset cue (Experiment 2), or a predictive central cue (Experiments 3–6) to direct attention to the left or right. In Experiments 1–5, this was followed by a pink or blue study word that required a speeded colour discrimination; in Experiment 6, it was followed by a pink or blue word or nonword that required a lexical decision. Each study word was followed by an instruction to Remember or Forget. A yes–no recognition test confirmed better recognition of to-be-remembered words than to-be-forgotten words; a cueing effect confirmed the effectiveness of predictive cues in allocating attentional resources. There was, however, no evidence that the directed forgetting effect differed for attended and unattended words: Encoding depends more on the memory intention formed after a study word has disappeared than on the availability of processing resources when that word first appears.

这项研究在项目方法定向遗忘任务的研究阶段嵌入了注意力线索。我们使用不可预测的起始线索（实验 1）、预测性起始线索（实验 2）或预测性中心线索（实验 3-6）来将注意力引导到左侧或右侧。在实验 1-5 中，后面跟着一个粉红色或蓝色的学习词，需要快速的颜色辨别；在实验 6 中，后面跟着一个粉红色或蓝色的单词或需要词汇判断的非单词。每个学习单词后面都附有“记住或忘记”的指示。是-否识别测试证实，对要记住的单词的识别效果比对要忘记的单词的识别效果要好；线索效应证实了预测线索在分配注意力资源方面的有效性。然而，没有证据表明定向遗忘效应对于有人关注和无人关注的单词有所不同：编码更多地取决于学习单词消失后形成的记忆意图，而不是该单词首次出现时处理资源的可用性。