Short article When intended remembering leads to unintended forgetting

As a means of clarifying the memory dynamics that underlie retrieval-induced forgetting, we explored how instructing participants either to remember or to forget a previously presented list of items influences the susceptibility of those items to inhibition. According to the inhibitory account of retrieval-induced forgetting, it is the items that interfere most with retrieval practice that should be the most susceptible to the effects of inhibition. Consistent with this prediction, items from lists that participants were told to remember suffered from significantly more retrieval-induced forgetting than did items from lists that participants were told to forget. As counterintuitive as it might seem, forgetting is critical for the adaptive and efficient functioning of human memory (see, e.g., E. L. Bjork & Bjork, 1988; R. A. Bjork, 1989). Without some means of reducing the accessibility of outdated or irrelevant information, it would become increas-ingly difficult to learn and access new and relevant information. One process that may underlie thi