The effects of emotional content on reality-monitoring performance in young and older adults

Reality monitoring refers to a person's ability to distinguish between perceived and imagined events. Prior research has demonstrated that young adults show a reality-monitoring advantage for negative arousing information as compared with neutral information. The present research examined whether this reality-monitoring benefit extends to positive information in young adults and whether older adults show a reality-monitoring advantage for emotional information of either valence. Two studies revealed no evidence for a reality-monitoring advantage for positive information; in both age groups, the reality-monitoring advantage existed only for negative information. Older adults were, however, more likely to remember that a positive item had been included on a study list than they were to remember that a nonemotional item had been studied. Young adults did not show this mnemonic enhancement for positive information. These results indicate that although older adults may show some mnemonic benefits for positive information (i.e., an enhanced ability to remember that a positive item was studied), they do not always show enhanced memory for source-specifying details of a positive item's presentation.     

Post-encoding emotional arousal enhances consolidation of item memory,but not reality-monitoring source memory

The current study examined whether the effect of post-encoding emotional arousal on item memory extends to reality-monitoring source memory and, if so, whether the effect depends on emotionality of learning stimuli and testing format. In Experiment 1, participants encoded neutral words and imagined or viewed their corresponding object pictures. Then they watched a neutral, positive, or negative video. The 24-hour delayed test showed that emotional arousal had little effect on both item memory and reality-monitoring source memory. Experiment 2 was similar except that participants encoded neutral, positive, and negative words and imagined or viewed their corresponding object pictures. The results showed that positive and negative emotional arousal induced after encoding enhanced consolidation of item memory, but not reality-monitoring source memory, regardless of emotionality of learning stimuli. Experiment 3, identical to Experiment 2 except that participants were tested only on source memory for all the encoded items, still showed that post-encoding emotional arousal had little effect on consolidation of reality-monitoring source memory. Taken together, regardless of emotionality of learning stimuli and regardless of testing format of source memory (conjunction test vs. independent test), the facilitatory effect of post-encoding emotional arousal on item memory does not generalize to reality-monitoring source memory.     

Memory enhancement for emotional words: Are emotional words more vividly remembered than neutral words?

Individuals are more likely to remember negative information than neutral information. In the experiments reported here, we examined whether individuals were also more likely to remember details of the presentation of negative words, as compared with neutral words. In Experiment 1, the remember-know procedure was used to examine the effect of emotion on the vividness of an individual's memory, showing that remember responses were more frequently assigned to negative words than neutral words. In Experiment 2, a source memory paradigm was used, and again, evidence that individuals' memories were more detailed for negative than for neutral words was found. In Experiments 3-6, we examined the relative contribution of valence and arousal, finding that both dimensions increased the vividness of remembered information (i.e., items with valence only and those that elicited arousal were better remembered than neutral information) but that the effect was greater for words that evoked arousal than for those with valence only. The results support a qualitative, as well as a quantitative, memory benefit for emotional, as compared with neutral, words.     

The effects of emotional content on source monitoring in fibromyalgia patients

Source confusion refers to a person’s failure to distinguish whether an event has been actually seen or simply imagined. Nevertheless, prior research has demonstrated a reduction of source confusion for negative arousing information. According to the emotional-congruence effect, this emotional benefit is likely observed in patients suffering from chronic pain. This hypothesis was tested on 15 patients suffering of fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) and 15 healthy women. In a source-monitoring task, participants had to decide whether positive, negative, and neutral words were imagined or seen with a picture. The results showed recognition deficits and more source confusion for FMS patients compared to controls. Contrary to the hypothesis of negativity bias in fibromyalgia, patients exhibited enhanced recognition for both positive and negative words. Moreover, they showed better source memory for the imagined items than for those seen with a picture. Overall, these results indicate that FMS affects episodic memory.     

Influence of emotion on memory for temporal information

Contextual information, such as color and spatial location, has been found to be better remembered for emotional than for neutral items. The current study examined whether the influence of emotion extends to memory for another fundamental feature of episodic memory: temporal information. Results from a list-discrimination paradigm showed that (a) item memory was enhanced for both negative and positive pictures compared with neutral ones and was better for negative than for positive pictures and (b) temporal information was better remembered for negative than for positive and neutral pictures, whereas positive and neutral pictures did not differ from each other. These findings are discussed in relation to the processes involved in memory for temporal information.     

Emotion's influence on memory for spatial and temporal context

Individuals report remembering emotional items vividly. It is debated whether this report reflects enhanced memory accuracy or a bias to believe emotional memories are vivid. We hypothesised emotion would enhance memory accuracy, improving memory for contextual details. The hallmark of episodic memory is that items are remembered in a spatial and temporal context, so we examined whether an item's valence (positive, negative) or arousal (high, low) would influence its ability to be remembered with those contextual details. Across two experiments, high-arousal items were remembered with spatial and temporal context more often than low-arousal items. Item valence did not influence memory for those details, although positive high-arousal items were recognised or recalled more often than negative items. These data suggest that emotion does not just bias participants to believe they have a vivid memory; rather, the arousal elicited by an event can benefit memory for some types of contextual details.     

Emotion's influence on memory for spatial and temporal context

Individuals report remembering emotional items vividly. It is debated whether this report reflects enhanced memory accuracy or a bias to believe emotional memories are vivid. We hypothesized emotion would enhance memory accuracy, improving memory for contextual details. The hallmark of episodic memory is that items are remembered in a spatial and temporal context, so we examined whether an item's valence (positive, negative) or arousal (high, low) would influence its ability to be remembered with those contextual details. Across two experiments, high-arousal items were remembered with spatial and temporal context more often than low-arousal items. Item valence did not influence memory for those details, although positive high-arousal items were recognized or recalled more often than negative items. These data suggest that emotion does not just bias participants to believe they have a vivid memory; rather, the arousal elicited by an event can benefit memory for some types of contextual details.     

Culture impacts the magnitude of the emotion-induced memory trade-off effect

The present study assessed the extent to which culture impacts the emotion-induced memory trade-off effect. This trade-off effect occurs because emotional items are better remembered than neutral ones, but this advantage comes at the expense of memory for backgrounds such that neutral backgrounds are remembered worse when they occurred with an emotional item than with a neutral one. Cultures differ in their prioritisation of focal object versus contextual background information, with Westerners focusing more on objects and Easterners focusing more on backgrounds. Americans, a Western culture, and Turks, an Eastern-influenced culture, incidentally encoded positive, negative, and neutral items placed against neutral backgrounds, and then completed a surprise memory test with the items and backgrounds tested separately. Results revealed a reduced trade-off for Turks compared to Americans. Although both groups exhibited an emotional enhancement in item memory, Turks did not show a decrement in memory for backgrounds that had been paired with emotional items. These findings complement prior ones showing reductions in trade-off effects as a result of task instructions. Here, we suggest that a contextual-focus at the level of culture can mitigate trade-off effects in emotional memory.     

The tenacious nature of memory binding for arousing negative items

In two experiments, we investigated whether people are better or worse at updating memory for the location of emotional pictures than of neutral pictures. We measured participants’ memories for the locations of both arousing negative pictures and neutral pictures while manipulating practice (encountering the same event repeatedly) and interference (encountering the same picture in a different location). Memory for the context of emotional items was less likely to be corrected when erroneous and was less likely to be correctly updated when the context changed. These results suggest that initial item-context binding is more tenacious for emotional items than for neutral items, even when such binding is incorrect.     

Emotion, directed forgetting, and source memory

We investigated the role of emotion on item and source memory using the item method of directed forgetting (DF) paradigm. We predicted that emotion would produce source memory impairment because emotion would make it more difficult to distinguish between to-be-remembered (R items) and to-be-forgotten items (F items) by making memory strength of R and F items similar to each other. Participants were presented with negatively arousing, positively arousing, and neutral pictures. After each picture, they received an instruction to remember or forget the picture. At retrieval, participants were asked to recall both R and F items and indicate whether each item was an R or F item. Recall was higher for the negatively arousing than for the positively arousing or neutral pictures. Further, DF occurred for the positively arousing and neutral pictures, whereas DF was not significant for the negatively arousing pictures. More importantly, the negatively arousing pictures, particularly the ones with violent content, showed a higher tendency of producing misattribution errors than the other picture types, supporting the notion that negative emotion may produce source memory impairment, even though it is still not clear whether the impairment occurs at encoding or retrieval.     

Event-related potentials of emotional memory: encoding pleasant,unpleasant, and neutral pictures

Emotional events tend to be remembered better than nonemotional events. We investigated this phenomenon by measuring two event-related potential (ERP) effects: the emotion effect (more positive ERPs for pleasant or unpleasant stimuli than for neutral stimuli) and the subsequent memory effect (more positive ERPs for subsequently remembered items than for subsequently forgotten items). ERPs were measured while subjects rated the emotional content of pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral pictures. As was expected, subsequent recall was better for pleasant and unpleasant pictures than for neutral pictures. The emotion effect was sensitive to arousal in parietal electrodes and to both arousal and valence in frontocentral electrodes. The subsequent memory effect at centroparietal electrodes was greater for emotional pictures than for neutral pictures during an early epoch (400-600 msec). This result suggests that emotional information has privileged access to processing resources, possibly leading to better memory formation.     

Emotional valence influences the neural correlates associated with remembering and knowing

In the present study, we examined whether emotional valence modulates the neural processes that are engaged during the encoding of information that is later vividly remembered versus that which is only known to be familiar. Participants underwent an fMRI scan while viewing positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. Later, recognized items were labeled as either remembered or known. Negative items that were later vividly remembered recruited temporo-occipital regions associated with sensory processing more than did positive or neutral items that were vividly remembered. The encoding of positive information later known recruited the cingulate gyrus and bilateral frontal and parietal areas—regions associated with episodic and semantic retrieval and self-referential processing—more than did the encoding of negative or neutral items that were later known. These results suggest that memories for negative items may be vividly recollected due to increased sensory processing during encoding, whereas enhanced gist-based processing of positive information may lead to increased feelings of familiarity.     

Memory for emotional simulations: remembering a rosy future

Mental simulations of future experiences are often concerned with emotionally arousing events. Although it is widely believed that mental simulations enhance future behavior, virtually nothing is known about how memory for these simulations changes over time or whether simulations of emotional experiences are especially well remembered. We used a novel paradigm that combined recently developed methods for generating simulations of future events and well-established procedures for testing memory to examine the retention of positive, negative, and neutral simulations over delays of 10 min and 1 day. We found that at the longer delay, details associated with negative simulations were more difficult to remember than details associated with positive or neutral simulations. We suggest that these effects reflect the influence of the fading-affect bias, whereby negative reactions fade more quickly than positive reactions, and that this influence results in a tendency to remember a rosy simulated future. We discuss implications of our findings for individuals with affective disorders, such as depression and anxiety.     

Children's emotional false memories

Eight- and 12-year-old children were presented with neutral and negative emotional Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists equated on familiarity and associative strength. Both recall and recognition (A') measures were obtained. Recall measures exhibited the usual age increments in true and false recollection. True neutral items were better recalled and recognized than true negative emotional items. Although the children showed more false recall for neutral than for negative emotional lists, false recognition was higher for negative emotional than for neutral items. A' analyses also showed that whereas true neutral information and false neutral information were easily discriminated by children regardless of age, the same was not the case for true and false negative emotional information. Together, these results suggest that although children may be able to censor negative emotional information at recall, such information promotes relational processing in children's memory, making true and false emotional information less discriminable overall.     

Memory enhancement by a semantically unrelated emotional arousal source induced after learning

It has been well established that moderate physiological or emotional arousal modulates memory. However, there is some controversy about whether the source of arousal must be semantically related to the information to be remembered. To test this idea, 35 healthy young adult participants learned a list of common nouns and afterward viewed a semantically unrelated, neutral or emotionally arousing videotape. The tape was shown after learning to prevent arousal effects on encoding or attention, instead influencing memory consolidation. Heart rate increase was significantly greater in the arousal group, and negative affect was significantly less reported in the non-arousal group after the video. The arousal group remembered significantly more words than the non-arousal group at both 30 min and 24 h delays, despite comparable group memory performance prior to the arousal manipulation. These results demonstrate that emotional arousal, even from an unrelated source, is capable of modulating memory consolidation. Potential reasons for contradictory findings in some previous studies, such as the timing of "delayed" memory tests, are discussed.     

Effect of negative emotional content on working memory and long-term memory

In long-term memory, negative information is better remembered than neutral information. Differences in processes important to working memory may contribute to this emotional memory enhancement. To examine the effect that the emotional content of stimuli has on working memory performance, the authors asked participants to perform working memory tasks with negative and neutral stimuli. Task accuracy was unaffected by the emotional content of the stimuli. Reaction times also did not differ for negative relative to neutral words, but on an n-back task using faces, participants were slower to respond to fearful faces than to neutral faces. These results suggest that although emotional content does not have a robust effect on working memory, in some instances emotional salience can impede working memory performance.     

Speaking of pain in Greek: Implications for the cognitive permeation of emotions

ABSTRACT

Although item-memory for emotional information is enhanced, memory for associations between items is often impaired for negative, emotionally arousing compared to neutral information. We tested two possible mechanisms underlying this impairment, using picture pairs: 1) higher confidence in one’s own ability to memorise negative information may cause participants to under-study negative pairs; 2) better interactive imagery for neutral pairs could facilitate associative memory for neutral pairs more than for negative pairs. Tested with associative recognition, we replicated the impairment of associative memory for negative pairs. We also replicated the result that confidence in future memory (judgments of learning) was higher for negative than neutral pairs. Inflated confidence could not explain the impairment of associative recognition memory: Judgements of learning were positively correlated with associative memory success for both negative and neutral pairs. However, neutral pairs were rated higher in their conduciveness to interactive imagery than negative pairs, and this difference in interactive imagery showed a robust relationship to the associative memory difference. Thus, associative memory reductions for negative information are not due to differences in encoding effort. Instead, interactive imagery may be less effective for encoding of negative than neutral pairs.     

The role of attention in the associative binding of emotionally arousing words

In the present study, we examined the role of attention in modulating the memory benefit of emotional arousal for same-valence word pair associations. To assess the role of attention either at encoding or at retrieval, participants studied lists of positive, neutral, and negative words pairs under full attention, divided attention at encoding, or divided attention at retrieval, and then were tested on the single words and on the associations between words. Consistent with past studies, memory accuracy was higher for emotional items than for neutral items, and no memory difference was observed across emotional arousal conditions for associations when encoding occurred under full attention. In contrast, memory accuracy was higher for emotionally arousing items and associations relative to neutral items when encoding occurred under divided attention. Finally, dividing attention at retrieval revealed similar effects across emotion conditions, suggesting that retrieval of emotional stimuli relative to neutral stimuli, unlike encoding, does not benefit from automatic processing. The discussion emphasizes the role of automatic processing during encoding in producing the benefit of emotionally enhanced memory, as well as the extent to which controlled attention is responsible for eliminating or reversing (relative to neutral materials) emotionally enhanced memory for associations. Additionally, the implications of the divided-attention-at-retrieval manipulation include consideration of the way in which emotional items may be consciously processed during encoding.     

负性情绪对不同语义、空间关系联结记忆的影响

以负性项目-中性场景以及中性项目-中性场景组成的图片对为材料,通过操控项目-场景之间的语义联系和空间距离,考察了负性情绪对不同语义、空间关系联结记忆的影响。结果显示,当项目-场景空间距离较近时,无论项目-场景之间的语义是否相关,负性情绪始终不会影响项目-场景联结记忆;当项目-场景空间距离较远且语义不相关时,负性情绪会削弱项目-场景联结记忆;而当项目-场景空间距离较远且语义相关时,负性情绪会促进项目-场景联结记忆。结果表明,负性情绪对项目-场景联结记忆的影响会受到项目与场景之间语义关系和空间关系的调节,且语义关系在项目-场景空间距离较远时的作用更为突出。     

Emotion and memory: A recognition advantage for positive and negative words independent of arousal

Much evidence indicates that emotion enhances memory, but the precise effects of the two primary factors of arousal and valence remain at issue. Moreover, the current knowledge of emotional memory enhancement is based mostly on small samples of extremely emotive stimuli presented in unnaturally high proportions without adequate affective, lexical, and semantic controls. To investigate how emotion affects memory under conditions of natural variation, we tested whether arousal and valence predicted recognition memory for over 2500 words that were not sampled for their emotionality, and we controlled a large variety of lexical and semantic factors. Both negative and positive stimuli were remembered better than neutral stimuli, whether arousing or calming. Arousal failed to predict recognition memory, either independently or interactively with valence. Results support models that posit a facilitative role of valence in memory. This study also highlights the importance of stimulus controls and experimental designs in research on emotional memory.