When Inhibition Meets Survival: Adaptive-Semantic Relevance Modulates Inhibitory Control

Using an item-method directed-forgetting paradigm, we examined whether survival relevance modulates inhibitory control. High survilval-value stimuli showed greater resistance to suppression than neutral words, even after explicit forget cues. These findings indicate that intentional forgetting is constrained by adaptive significance of the material, highlighting limits in item-specific inhibition.