Psychological Development and Education ›› 2025, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (4): 589-597.doi: 10.16187/j.cnki.issn1001-4918.2025.04.15

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Inhibition Mechanisms Underlying Active Forgetting

WANG Yifan1, ZHANG Huan1,2,3   

  1. 1. Faculty of Psychology, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387;
    2. Key Research Base of Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, Academy of Psychology and Behavior, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin 300387;
    3. Tianjin Social Science Laboratory of Students' Mental Development and Learning, Tianjin 300387
  • Published:2025-07-12

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Abstract: Active forgetting refers to forgetting that is caused by consciously inhibiting the memory process of certain content. Memory formation is a dynamic process that includes memory encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and reconsolidation. Inhibition acting on different phases of memory will result in distinct inhibition mechanisms, which will lead to different types of active forgetting. The characteristics of active forgetting and its cognitive-neural mechanisms when inhibition is applied to the encoding, retrieval, consolidation, and reconsolidation stages are reviewed in this paper. Future research should compare the cognitive and neural mechanisms of different active forgetting phenomena, particularly the similarities and differences in the inhibition process and mechanism. Also, it should include non-cognitive factors in the study. Finally, different populations and their active forgetting processes should be inspected.

Key words: active forgetting, inhibition mechanism, encoding inhibition, retrieval inhibition, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

CLC Number: 

  • B844
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