Abstract: In the intentional forgetting paradigm,after material had been presented for study,subjects were instructed to remember some of them and forget the remainder.Considerabe research showed that remember-cued items were recalled more thanforget-cued items. There were mainly two theories to explain the result:encoding-basedtheory and retrieval inhibition theory.ms research aimed at investigating the roles ofencoding elaboration and retrieval inhibition on intentional forgetting.In the experimentundergraduate students were given an item-by-item cued study task,either a direct(cued recall word-stem completion)or an indirect test (repetition priming word-stemcompletion),and a final recognition test. Two new methods were introduced into theresearch: one was carefully controlled word-stem completion with computer, and theother was so-called unrelated items. By comparing memory of unrelated items withremember-and forget-cued iterns,the result indicated that selective rehearsal and retrievalinhibition played roles on intentional forgetting.

Key words: intentional forgetting, word stem completion, elaboration of encoding, retrieval inhibition