Objective:To compare the motivated forgetting ability between adolescents with depression and normal adolescents and to explore the relationship of this ability with childhood trauma and symptoms of depression.Methods:Totally 141 adolescents diagnosed with depression according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,Fifth Edition(DSM-5),and 42 normal controls participated in the study.The directed forgetting(DF)task was employed,using emotional images as memory stimuli,to compare the recognition per-formance between the two groups.The presence of the DF effect was identified when the recognition score under the"to-be-remembered"condition was significantly higher than the"to-be-forgotten"condition.The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire Short Form(CTQ-SF)and Beck Depression Inventory-Ⅱ(BDI-Ⅱ)were utilized to assess the severi-ty of participants'childhood trauma and depression symptoms.Results:Unlike the control group,the adolescents with depression only exhibited the DF effect with positive stimuli(P＜0.001).In the depression group,the DF effect value for negative stimuli partially mediated the relationship between CTQ-SF scores and BDI-Ⅱ scores(effect size=0.10,95％confidence interval 0.05-0.17,accounting for 21.3％of the total effect).Conclusion:The motivated forgetting ability is partially impaired in adolescents with depression.The ability,especially regarding negative memories,plays a partial mediating role between childhood trauma and depressive symptoms in adolescents with depression.