Date of Submission

Spring 2024

Academic Program

Psychology

Project Advisor 1

Justin Hulbert

Abstract/Artist's Statement

When confronted with unwanted memories, individuals engage in a cascade of interconnected cognitive, neurological, and physiological responses. While the cognitive and neurologic effects of memory suppression have been well-studied, the physiological responses, most notably respiration, and associated neural correlates remain relatively unexplored. A total of 18 participants underwent the Think No-Think (TNT) paradigm and had their physiological data, specifically respiration rate and depth, collected using a respiration belt. We aimed to observe how this measure changed when they tried to suppress unwanted memories. We successfully replicated key behavioral findings from the standard TNT paradigm. While we did not observe differences in respiratory rate between Think (recall) and No-Think (suppression) trials, we found that participants breathed significantly deeper in No-Think trials compared to Think trials. Additionally, we found that participants breathed relatively faster and shallower in the Think and No-Think trials relative to the Rest trials. Future studies should focus on improving the reliability and generalizability of these findings by using larger sample sizes and more accurate baselines, as well as manipulating the respiration variable without compromising behavioral results. Further research in this area has the potential to inform the development of innovative therapeutic interventions for memory-related disorders and stress management.

Open Access Agreement

Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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