Source‐monitoring accuracy across repeated tests following directed forgetting

The repeated recall of items from lists that participants were earlier instructed to either remember or to forget was examined in two experiments. RR participants (those instructed to remember both lists they were presented) tended to recall more List 1 items than FR participants (those instructed to forget the first list and to remember the second list). FR participants recalled more List 2 items than did RR participants, but only when directed to report those items (Experiment 1), not when directed to report items from both lists (Experiment 2). Participants experienced difficulty correctly reporting the list source of items they recalled and incorrect source recall increased across tests, showing hypermnesia. This later result underscores the need for caution when assessing the accuracy of information retrieved from multiple sources across repeated tests. Together, the data patterns provide support for the retrieval dynamics account of hypermnesia, the context‐change account of directed forgetting, and limited support for the retrieval inhibition view of directed forgetting.