Retrieval-induced forgetting can be caused by recognition practice - but not by restudy.

Abstract

We examined whether study practice can cause forgetting. Participants first studied a list of items and then, during study practice, were asked to restudy some of the previously studied pairs along with some new pairs. Participants were then given a category-plus-stem cued-recall test for all originally studied category–exemplar pairs. Although study practice strengthened the subset of items being restudied and facilitated their subsequent recall, it did not cause related unstudied items to be forgotten. We suggest that inhibition may have played a similar role in causing the recognition-based retrieval-induced forgetting. These findings have important implications for understanding recognition processes.