Retrieval Induced Forgetting (RIF) demonstrates that retrieval of information can lead to forgetting of related information. The standard RIF paradigm involves studying a certain number of category-exemplar pairs; thereafter, half of the exemplars from half of the categories are retrieved. Finally, all studied pairs are recalled. RIF is revealed when unretrieved exemplars from the retrieved categories are more poorly recalled than exemplars from the unretrieved categories. One explanation for RIF asserts that inhibition prevents interference from the exemplars of the same category during the interpolated retrieval practice phase, which leads to forgetting of these items at final recall. An ongoing debate concerns whether this inhibition requires executive control or whether it is automatic. If inhibition in RIF involves executive control, then a task that will exhaust this limited capacity should reduce or eliminate the RIF effect. The effects of concurrent tasks during the retrieval practice phase have been shown to reduce or eliminate RIF, however, to our knowledge, the effects of prior tasks on RIF has not been investigated. In the present study, in one condition, we conducted an exhaustive inhibition task before the retrieval practice phase and compared this condition to the one in which the prior task was non-exhaustive. Results showed that the RIF effect was eliminated when the prior task was exhaustive. The results supported the executive control view for the inhibition mechanism behind RIF and further showed that exhaustion of the executive control capacity can impair inhibition in subsequent tasks.

检索诱导遗忘（RIF）表明信息的检索会导致相关信息的遗忘。标准的 RIF 范式涉及研究一定数量的类别-范例对；此后，检索来自一半类别的一半样本。最后，召回所有研究的对。当检索到的类别中未检索到的样本比未检索到的类别中的样本更难回忆时，就会显示 RIF。对 RIF 的一种解释断言，在插值检索练习阶段，抑制可以防止来自同一类别的样本的干扰，这会导致在最终召回时忘记这些项目。正在进行的辩论涉及这种抑制是否需要执行控制，或者它是否是自动的。如果 RIF 中的抑制涉及执行控制，那么将耗尽这种有限能力的任务应该减少或消除RIF效应。在检索练习阶段并发任务的影响已被证明可以减少或消除 RIF，但是，据我们所知，尚未研究先前任务对 RIF 的影响。在本研究中，在一种情况下，我们在检索练习阶段之前进行了详尽的抑制任务，并将这种情况与之前的任务不详尽的情况进行了比较。结果表明，当先前的任务详尽时，RIF 效应被消除。结果支持RIF背后抑制机制的执行控制观点，并进一步表明执行控制能力的耗尽会损害后续任务的抑制。