ABSTRACT
Objective:To explore the directed forgetting ability of elder people to disease/death-related words under the conditions of the neutral and negative emotion.Methods:Thirty-six elder people and thirty-seven young people were included in this study.The directed forgetting effects to disease/death-related words were compared by using item-method directed forgetting paradigm under the neutral and negative emotional conditions.Results:Under the neutral and negative emotion conditions,higher recognition of to-be-remembered (TBR) than to-be-forgotten (TBF) words in elder group and younger group (Ps ＜ 0.05).The elder group showed the weaker effect of directed forgetting than younger group[neutral emotion:(0.4 ± 0.1) vs.(0.6 ± 0.1);negative emotion:(0.3 ± 0.1) vs.(0.7 ± 0.04),Ps ＜ 0.05].Under the negative emotion condition,elder people showed stronger effect of directed forgetting for sensitive words compared with control words[(0.4 ± 0.1) vs.(0.1 ± 0.1),P ＜ 0.001].Conclusion:The results suggest that the directed forgetting ability of elderly is weaker than that of young individuals,the ability of non-sensitive words than that with sensitive words,and the directed forgetting effect of elder people tonon-sensitive words in negative emotion is weaker than that in neutral emotion.