Acute psychological stress facilitates the forgetting of neutral but not negative information.

This study investigated whether psychological stress influences the directed forgetting (DF) effect for neutral and negative information. The Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) was adopted to induce acute stress. Subsequently, both the stress and control groups performed a modified directed forgetting (DF) task. Results showed that, (1) For both neutral and negative items, the recognition rate was higher for the to-be-remembered (TBR) items than for the to-be-forgotten (TBF) items, a typical DF effect in both groups. (2) A reduced DF effect was found for the negative items than for the neutral items in the stress group, but not in the control group. (3) Compared to the control group, a lower recognition performance of TBF items, as well as an enhanced DF effect, was found in the stress group for neutral items but not for negative items. These results demonstrated that acute psychological stress could facilitate the memory control process of neutral, but not negative information.