Varying Daydreaming Cues (07-28-10)

What people are daydreaming about influences how quickly they forget recently learned material, so different daydream cues are useful in particular situations.  Delaney and his colleagues learned that “Daydreams that are more different from the current moment (e.g., in distance, time, or circumstance) will result in more forgetting than daydreams that are less different from the current moment, because they result in a greater contextual shift.”  Artwork of scenes from a distant continent thus has a more useful, amnesic effect in a space in which people will rest after an unpleasant medical procedure than artwork depicting local landmarks.

Peter Delaney, Lili Sahakyan, Colleen Kelley, and Carissa Zimmerman.  2010.  “Remembering to Forget:  The Amnesic Effect of Daydreaming.”  Psychological Science, vol. 21, no. 7, pp. 1036—1042.