Emotionally enhanced memory for negatively arousing words: storage or retrieval advantage?

People typically remember emotionally negative words better than neutral words. Two experiments are reported that investigate whether emotionally enhanced memory (EEM) for negatively arousing words is based on a storage or retrieval advantage. Participants studied non-word–word pairs that either involved negatively arousing or neutral target words. Memory for these target words was tested by means of a recognition test and a cued-recall test. Data were analysed with a multinomial model that allows the disentanglement of storage and retrieval processes in the present recognition-then-cued-recall paradigm. In both experiments the multinomial analyses revealed no storage differences between negatively arousing and neutral words but a clear retrieval advantage for negatively arousing words in the cued-recall test. These findings suggest that EEM for negatively arousing words is driven by associative processes.     

Immediate memory for faces: Long- or short-term memory?

Immediate recognition memory span and short-term forgetting for non-verbal stimuli (“unfamiliar faces”) were investigated in normal subjects and amnesic patients. Surnames were used as a verbal control. It was found that normal subjects had a reliable immediate recognition span of one for faces and that there was no decrement in performance in the retention of three faces over a 30-s interval. Amnesic subjects were impaired on both the immediate memory span task and on the short-term forgetting task. This pattern of results contrasts with those obtained using surnames on which the results were comparable to other verbal S.T.M. tasks. It is suggested that performance on these tasks of recognition memory for faces is determined by L.T.M. processes. The implications for the interpretation of S.T.M. are discussed.     

Children's memory for complex autobiographical events: Does spacing of repeated instances matter?

Often, when children testify in court they do so as victims of a repeated offence and must report details of an instance of the offence. One factor that may influence children's ability to succeed in this task concerns the temporal distance between presentations of the repeated event. Indeed, there is a substantial amount of literature on the “spacing effect” that suggests this may be the case. In the current research, we examined the effect of temporal spacing on memory reports for complex autobiographical events. Children participated in one or four play sessions presented at different intervals. Later, children were suggestively questioned, and then participated in a memory test. Superior recall of distributed events (a spacing effect) was found when the delay to test was 1?day (Experiment 1) but there was little evidence for a spacing effect when the delay was 1 week (Experiment 2). Implications for understanding children's recall of repeated autobiographical events are discussed.     

Children's memory for complex autobiographical events: does spacing of repeated instances matter?

Often, when children testify in court they do so as victims of a repeated offence and must report details of an instance of the offence. One factor that may influence children's ability to succeed in this task concerns the temporal distance between presentations of the repeated event. Indeed, there is a substantial amount of literature on the "spacing effect" that suggests this may be the case. In the current research, we examined the effect of temporal spacing on memory reports for complex autobiographical events. Children participated in one or four play sessions presented at different intervals. Later, children were suggestively questioned, and then participated in a memory test. Superior recall of distributed events (a spacing effect) was found when the delay to test was 1 day (Experiment 1) but there was little evidence for a spacing effect when the delay was 1 week (Experiment 2). Implications for understanding children's recall of repeated autobiographical events are discussed.     

Whose picture is this? Children's memory for item and source information

Children aged 3½ to 6½ years viewed pictures of common objects presented either once or three times on one of two consecutive days. A different hand puppet was used to present the pictures on each day, providing both perceptual and temporal cues to source. At test, old (studied) and new (non‐studied) pictures were presented for item recognition and source identification. Results showed that both item and source accuracy were higher for older (M = 5; 9 years) than younger children (M = 4; 6 years). Significant interactions between Age and Day of study were found for both item and source accuracy. For younger children, accuracy was higher for pictures studied on Day 1 than Day 2 (significant for source identification but not item recognition), whereas older children showed the opposite pattern: Higher accuracy for Day 2 than Day 1 (significant for item recognition but not source identification). Results are interpreted with respect to proactive interference and response bias. The utility of signal detection theory measures in determining the basis of age differences in performance of source identification is discussed.     

Can semantic relatedness explain the enhancement of memory for emotional words?

Memory for emotional items is often better than memory for neutral items. In three experiments, we examined whether this typical finding is due to the higher semantic relatedness inherent to emotional items, a confound in previous studies. We also controlled for other possible confounding variables, such as imagery. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants encoded lists of emotional and categorized neutral words equivalent in semantic relatedness, as well as lists of random neutral words with lower semantic relatedness. In Experiment 3, the lists were mixed, containing words from all the conditions. Surprise free recall was tested after a 40- to 55-min retention interval. Free recall of emotional words was better than that of random neutral words, replicating the classic effect. Importantly, categorized words were recalled better than random neutral words, and not worse than emotional words. These results emphasize the important role of semantic relatedness in the classic effect and suggest that organizational processes operate alongside arousal-related ones to enhance memory for emotional material.     

Memory for pictures and words as a function of level of processing: Depth or dual coding?

The experiment was designed to test differential predictions derived from dual-coding and depth-of-processing hypotheses. Subjects under incidental memory instructions free recalled a list of 36 test events, each presented twice. Within the list, an equal number of events were assigned to structural, phonemic, and semantic processing conditions. Separate groups of subjects were tested with a list of pictures, concrete words, or abstract words. Results indicated that retention of concrete words increased as a direct function of the processing-task variable (structural < phonemic 相似文献   

The integration of psychotherapy: Goal or utopia?

Both researchers and therapists stress the importance of integrating different forms of psychotherapy. Integration may be achieved in three ways. Supporters of the “empirical strategy” believe that more research is the solution. Followers of the “conceptual strategy” try to theorize on psychotherapy using psychological and sociological concepts. Other researchers see a “linguistic strategy” as the way to achieving a better understanding of psychotherapy. Whether any of these strategies will enable us to increase our insight into psychotherapy is questionable. All focus on technical aspects, that is, on the means to achieve effects. Yet, therapeutic effects cannot be understood unless they are interconnected with diagnostics. This paper argues that an integrated theory should be developed which includes diagnostics and treatment and which is supported by a theory on psychological (dys)functioning.     

The processing of non-target words: Semantic or not?

It is known that people reacting to visual words may be affected by the meaning of accompanying non-target words. On the approach to perception developed by Treisman (e.g. 1986), this is surprising, because meaning might be thought to require analysis of conjunctions of physical features and so should remain uncomputed for non-target words. Treisman's approach does, however, assert that analysis of the target may unleash further processes that would prime the system for detection of related words. If this were so, then presentation of the target earlier than the distractors would increase the effect of the latter; whereas if analysis of non-targets were independent of priming, they might be expected to have a smaller effect when delayed. Further, if the sets of words involved are small and familiar, then individual features of primed non-targets, rather than conjunctions of features, might trigger interference. They might especially do so when spatial separation of target and non-target is small.

Five experiments using a paradigm developed by Shaffer and LaBerge confirm that the meaning of non-target words affects response to targets; but (1) this is more true for early than for late arrival of the target; (2) it is affected by target/non-target separation in space; (3) it is true for familiar sets of repeated words but not, in these data, for words used once only in the experiment. It is therefore concluded that the results are more consistent with a Treisman type of explanation than with a theory of universal and automatic full analysis.     

Switching between memory and perception: Moving attention or memory retrieval?

Weber, Burt, and Noll (1986) estimated that the time needed to switch attention between memory and perception was around 300 msec. The first two experiments in the present paper estimated switching time using a variation of their task. Subjects reported aloud lists of six items. The items were read off a computer screen (perception), recited from memory, or reported alternately from the two sources. The data show that the switching-time estimate is influenced by input/output compatibility, response-initiation times, and memory load. When these factors were controlled, estimated switching time dropped to around 100-150 msec. The data suggest, however, that the switch from perception to memory might be slower than the switch from memory to perception, which would invalidate the formula used to compute switching time. Experiment 3 tested the time for a single switch from perception to memory and a single switch from memory to perception by restricting report to one pair of items in the list. When the to-be-reported pair was precued, estimated switching time dropped to zero. When the pair was not precued, the memory-to-perception switching time remained at zero, but the perception-to-memory time was more than 400 msec. The pattern of results forced a reconceptualization of the task in terms of memory retrieval rather than attention switching. The attention-switching times appear to reflect processes required to select items from memory.     

Is cross-modal integration of emotional expressions independent of attentional resources?

In this study, we examined whether integration of visual and auditory information about emotions requires limited attentional resources. Subjects judged whether a voice expressed happiness or fear, while trying to ignore a concurrently presented static facial expression. As an additional task, the subjects had to add two numbers together rapidly (Experiment 1), count the occurrences of a target digit in a rapid serial visual presentation (Experiment 2), or judge the pitch of a tone as high or low (Experiment 3). The visible face had an impact on judgments of the emotion of the heard voice in all the experiments. This cross-modal effect was independent of whether or not the subjects performed a demanding additional task. This suggests that integration of visual and auditory information about emotions may be a mandatory process, unconstrained by attentional resources.     

Time window from visual images to visual short-term memory: consolidation or integration?

When two dot arrays are briefly presented, separated by a short interval of time, visual short-term memory of the first array is disrupted if the interval between arrays is shorter than 1300-1500 ms (Brockmole, Wang, & Irwin, 2002). Here we investigated whether such a time window was triggered by the necessity to integrate arrays. Using a probe task we removed the need for integration but retained the requirement to represent the images. We found that a long time window was needed for performance to reach asymptote even when integration across images was not required. Furthermore, such window was lengthened if subjects had to remember the locations of the second array, but not if they only conducted a visual search among it. We suggest that a temporal window is required for consolidation of the first array, which is vulnerable to disruption by subsequent images that also need to be memorized.     

Processing alternative explanations of behavior: correction or integration?

Three experiments investigated how activation of knowledge about situational forces affects discounting in dispositional inference tasks. Each experiment varied a different knowledge activation factor--salience, accessibility, or specificity of situational information. In addition, all 3 experiments varied situational demands and cognitive load. The results showed that cognitive load eliminated discounting when situational information was low in salience, accessibility, or specificity. However, when situational information was more salient, accessible, or specific, it produced strong discounting effects even when perceivers were under cognitive load. These results are discussed in terms of correction and integration models of dispositional inferences from behavior.     

Advantage for emotional words in immediate and delayed memory tasks: could it be explained in terms of processing capacity?

Emotional stimuli are better remembered and recognized than neutral ones. This advantage for emotional stimuli has been repeatedly obtained when testing long-term retention. However, there are contradictory results concerning retention of emotional information when short retention intervals are used. The aim of the present study was, on the one hand, to test the effect of retention interval on memory for emotional stimuli (Experiment 1). The results showed that emotional information is better remembered than neutral information in both immediate and delayed memory tests, suggesting that the advantage for emotional information is not limited to long retention intervals. On the other hand, I tried to test the proposals made by Christianson and Nilsson (1984) and Bower (1992). These authors suggested that the advantage for emotional stimuli could be explained as emotional stimuli spending more processing capacity during acquisition, thus rendering less capacity available to encode simultaneously presented information (Experiments 2 and 3). Results showed that concurrent presentation of emotional stimuli did not inhibit the recall of neutral stimuli. These findings do not seem to support the proposals of Christianson and Nilsson (1984) and Bower (1992). According to these results, some mechanisms other than a greater spending of processing capacity have to be involved in the advantage for emotional information in memory.     

Cognitive complexity and cognitive-affective integration: related or separate domains of adult development?

This study used a latent variable approach to describe two broad domains of adult development and their interrelations. One domain was cognitive complexity, defined by crystallized intelligence, fluid intelligence, and reflective cognition: the other domain was cognitive-affective integration, operationalized in terms of integrated and defensive coping. It was hypothesized that these 2 domains are related to each other and that they imply different developmental correlates. Structural relations among the latent variables supported a model in which integrated coping showed positive relations with crystallized intelligence and reflective cognition, whereas defensive coping showed negative relations to these cognitive factors. Age and education were significant predictors of the cognitive complexity factors, whereas evaluations of the climate in one's current family and family of origin were related to the factors of cognitive-affective integration.     

Just the facts or just for fun? Children's understanding of and sensitivity to retelling contexts

Adults appear to recognize that different memory sharing contexts, such as telling a story to a friend at a party versus providing eyewitness testimony, vary in their accuracy demands and adjust their retellings accordingly. There is less evidence that children are able to make the same distinctions. In the present two‐part experiment, we first tested 6–8‐year‐old children's beliefs about the accuracy requirements of different memory sharing contexts that varied on the listener's implicit expectation about accuracy. Children were then read a short story and were given retelling instructions that emphasized accuracy or entertainment. Results from the first task indicated that children evidence a significant truth bias, suggesting that they believe accurate retellings are preferred regardless of context. Despite this, children did appear to adjust their retellings as a function of context, with retellings in the high accuracy condition including more verbatim and less error statements. Finally, children who evidenced a stronger truth bias were less likely to employ the language of storytelling by producing lower‐quality narratives. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.