In an item-method directed forgetting task, memory instructions presumably operate by promoting further rehearsal of to-be-remembered (TBR) items and limiting encoding of to-be-forgotten (TBF) items. We asked whether diverting attentional resources away from TBF items and towards a new item that needed to be committed to memory would improve forgetting. To this end, study words in our experiments were presented singly followed by a remember instruction (single-TBR), by a forget instruction (single-TBF), or else were replaced by a new word to be remembered (replace-TBR) in place of the original study word which could be forgotten (replace-TBF). A typical directed forgetting effect was observed across single and replace trials. However, there was no compelling evidence that forgetting was better for replace-TBF compared to single-TBF words, suggesting that, by itself, the explicit redirection of attentional and other processing resources away from forget items may not be sufficient to improve item-method directed forgetting.

在项目方法定向遗忘任务中，记忆指令大概是通过促进要记住的（TBR）项目的进一步排练和限制要忘记的（TBF）项目的编码来操作的。我们询问将注意力资源从 TBF 项目转移到需要记忆的新项目是否会改善遗忘。为此，我们的实验中的学习单词单独呈现，然后是记住指令（single-TBR）、忘记指令（single-TBF），或者被要记住的新单词（replace-TBR）替换可能被遗忘的原始学习单词的位置（替换-TBF）。在单一试验和替代试验中观察到了典型的定向遗忘效应。然而，没有令人信服的证据表明，与单个 TBF 单词相比，替换 TBF 的遗忘效果更好，这表明，将注意力和其他处理资源从遗忘项目上明确重定向本身可能不足以改善项目方法定向遗忘。