Could SuperMemo be used to extinguish behaviours as well as reinforce them?
Forgetting is a molecular process that cannot easily be induced by natural methods. The more so, there are no sensitive methods to induce selective forgetting, though lesion to some parts of the cerebral cortex may produce roughly localized amnesia. However, there is a component of forgetting that may be influenced. This component is interference. Whenever we learn new things, they always interfere with previously learned material. The interference may enhance some of memories while obliterating others. This fact can be used to employ SuperMemo in forgetting, by formulating and memorizing a large number of contradictory items that strongly interfere with remembered facts that are to be forgotten. For example, if you learn the meaning of the word “indict” and you want to later forget it, you might try to learn words like “indite” or some meaningless like “dictin”, “incid”, “endict”, etc. However, you should not expect the effectiveness of such a procedure to be anything but disappointin
