Abstract: Intentional forgetting of emotional memories refers to the phenomenon that people attempt to actively put the unwanted memories which are emotionally disturbing out of awareness. Directed forgetting and suppression forgetting, two types of intentional forgetting, have triggered a bunch of studies so far. The item method and the list method are used to explore the mechanisms of directed forgetting, while the TNT task and the white bear task are mainly used to investigate suppression forgetting. In this article, we reviewed laboratory studies in this area, posing some important questions for the future studies, such as the interaction of different paradigms and cognitive systems, individual differences, the separation of emotional responses from the emotional events, and so on.

Key words: emotional memory, intentional forgetting, directed forgetting, suppression forgetting