MEMORIES OUT OF ORDER - THOUGHT SUPPRESSION AND THE DISTURBANCE OF SEQUENCE MEMORY

Participants in 2 experiments watched a filmed story and then left the lab-with instructions not to think about the film, with instructions to think about the film, or with no instructions. Memories of the film , assessed on participants' return to the lab some 5 hr later, showed reliable effects of thought suppression on memory for the sequence of events in the him. Participants who suppressed thoughts of the film we re less able to retrieve the order of events by several measures than were those in the other groups, even though their retrieval of the eve nts themselves as assessed by recognition, free recall, and cued recal l was not generally impaired.