The emotional memory effect: Differential processing or item distinctiveness?

A color-naming task was followed by incidental free recall to investigate how emotional words affect attention and memory. We compared taboo, nonthreatening negative-affect, and neutral words across three experiments. As compared with neutral words, taboo words led to longer color-naming times and better memory in both within- and between-subjects designs. Color naming of negative-emotion nontaboo words was slower than color naming of neutral words only during block presentation and at relatively short interstimulus intervals (ISIs). The nontaboo emotion words were remembered better than neutral words following blocked and random presentation and at both long and short ISIs, but only in mixed-list designs. Our results support multifactor theories of the effects of emotion on attention and memory. As compared with neutral words, threatening stimuli received increased attention, poststimulus elaboration, and benefit from item distinctiveness, whereas nonthreatening emotional stimuli benefited only from increased item distinctiveness.     

The impact of task-irrelevant emotional stimuli on attention in three domains

Whether task-irrelevant emotional stimuli facilitate or disrupt attention performance may depend on a range of factors, such as emotion type, task difficulty, and stimulus duration. Few studies, however, have systematically examined the influence of these factors on attention performance. Sixty-three adults, scoring within a normative range for mood and anxiety symptoms, completed either an easy or difficult version of an attention task measuring three aspects of attention performance: alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Results showed that in the easy task only, threatening versus nonthreatening task-irrelevant emotional faces facilitated orienting regardless of stimulus duration. These effects were no longer significant during the difficult condition. When the easy and difficult conditions were examined together, duration effects emerged such that stimuli of longer durations lead to greater interference, although effects were nonlinear. Findings illustrate that threat-relevant emotional stimuli facilitate attention during tasks with low cognitive load, but underscore the importance of considering a range of task parameters. Results are discussed in the context of adaptive and maladaptive emotion-attention interactions.     

Relations between emotion,memory encoding,and time perception

This study examined duration judgments for taboo and neutral words in prospective and retrospective timing tasks. In the prospective task, participants attended to time from the beginning and generated shorter duration estimates for taboo than neutral words and for words that they subsequently recalled in a surprise free recall task. These findings suggested that memory encoding took priority over estimating durations, directing attention away from time and causing better recall but shorter perceived durations for taboo than neutral words. However, in the retrospective task, participants only judged durations in a surprise test at the end, and their duration estimates were longer for taboo than neutral words. Present findings therefore suggest that the same emotion-linked memory encoding processes can cause underestimation of durations in prospective tasks but overestimation in retrospective tasks, as if emotion enhances recall of ongoing events but causes overestimation of the durations of those events in retrospect.     

Taking care of business? Grateful processing of unpleasant memories

In this study we investigated the impact of grateful processing on bringing closure to unpleasant emotional memories. After recalling an open memory, participants were randomly assigned to one of three writing conditions. For three sessions, participants wrote about neutral topics, the unpleasant event itself, or positive consequences from the event from their open memory that they felt they could now be grateful for. Results showed a significant effect of writing condition, and the pattern of means were as predicted: those in the grateful condition showed more memory closure, less unpleasant emotional impact, and less intrusiveness of the open memory than the other writing conditions. Grateful reappraisal of unpleasant memories may help individuals emotionally process these events, thus bringing emotional closure to these incidents. This might be one reason that grateful people tend to be happy people.     

The effects of valence and arousal on the emotional modulation of time perception: evidence for multiple stages of processing

Previous research has demonstrated that both emotional valence and arousal can influence the subjective experience of time. The current research extends this work by (1) identifying how quickly this emotional modulation of time perception can occur and (2) examining whether valence and arousal have different effects at different stages of perception. These questions were addressed using a temporal bisection task. In each block of this task, participants are trained to distinguish between two different exposure durations. Participants are then shown stimuli presented at a number of durations that fall between the two learned times, and are asked to indicate whether the test stimulus was closer in duration to the shorter or longer learned item. In the current study, participants completed blocks of trials in which the durations were "Short" (100-300 ms) or "Long" (400-1600 ms). Stimuli consisted of neutral photographs as well as four categories of emotional images: high-arousal negative, high-arousal positive, low-arousal negative, and low-arousal positive. In Short blocks, arousing and nonarousing negative images were judged to have been shown for shorter durations than they actually were (i.e., the duration was underestimated); this effect occurred at durations as brief as 133 ms. In Long blocks, the display time for highly arousing negative items was overestimated, whereas durations were underestimated for highly arousing positive items and less arousing negative items. These data suggest that arousal and valence have different effects at different stages of perception, possibly due to the different neural structures involved at each stage of the emotional modulation of time perception.     

Anxiety-related differences in affective categorizations of lexical stimuli

Effects of emotional valence on attention have been shown to occur even when stimuli are presented outside awareness. The impact of negative valence on stimulus processing has been demonstrated to be particularly salient in anxiety. Therefore, it has been hypothesized that compared to nonanxious individuals, anxious individuals have an enhanced ability to detect the valence of negative stimuli. However, it remains unclear whether anxious individuals are better at identifying the valence of threatening stimuli or, rather, more likely to label ambiguous stimuli as threatening. To investigate these hypotheses, high and low anxious participants categorized lexical stimuli as "safe" or "dangerous." Stimuli were presented at durations that allowed for both conscious (unmasked) and nonconscious (masked) processing. Results show that on masked trials, anxious individuals evidenced an enhanced ability to correctly classify threatening information, whereas nonanxious participants demonstrated an enhanced ability to correctly classify neutral or positive information. Signal detection analyses indicated results were explained by a response bias, whereby anxious individuals were more likely than nonanxious individuals to categorize masked words as threatening and nonanxious individuals were more likely to categorize masked words as nonthreatening. No group differences for nonword stimuli emerged, suggesting that anxiety-related response bias tendencies are activated only after detection of a weak semantic signal.     

The facilitated processing of threatening faces: an ERP analysis

Threatening, friendly, and neutral faces were presented to test the hypothesis of the facilitated perceptual processing of threatening faces. Dense sensor event-related brain potentials were measured while subjects viewed facial stimuli. Subjects had no explicit task for emotional categorization of the faces. Assessing early perceptual stimulus processing, threatening faces elicited an early posterior negativity compared with nonthreatening neutral or friendly expressions. Moreover, at later stages of stimulus processing, facial threat also elicited augmented late positive potentials relative to the other facial expressions, indicating the more elaborate perceptual analysis of these stimuli. Taken together, these data demonstrate the facilitated perceptual processing of threatening faces. Results are discussed within the context of an evolved module of fear (A. Ohman & S. Mineka, 2001).     

4～5岁儿童对社会事件记忆的消极偏向

消极偏向是指相对于积极或中性的刺激,消极刺激能够获得更多的注意和认知加工。本研究采用故事法通过三个实验考察4~5岁儿童对社会事件的记忆是否存在消极偏向。实验一发现幼儿对威胁行为的回忆成绩显著优于对中性行为和助人行为的回忆成绩。实验二发现幼儿对悲伤事件的回忆成绩显著优于对中性和愉快事件的回忆成绩。实验三发现幼儿对威胁行为的前瞻记忆成绩显著优于中性和助人行为的前瞻记忆成绩。研究说明无论事件是威胁性的还是非威胁性的,无论是回溯记忆还是前瞻记忆,4~5岁儿童的记忆都表现出消极偏向。     

Post-event spontaneous intrusive recollections and strength of memory for emotional events in men and women

Spontaneous intrusive recollections (SIRs) follow traumatic events in clinical and non-clinical populations. To determine whether any relationship exists between SIRs and enhanced memory for emotional events, participants viewed emotional or neutral films, had their memory for the films tested two days later, and estimated the number of SIRs they experienced for each film. SIR frequency related positively to memory strength, an effect more pronounced in the emotional condition. These findings represent the first demonstration of a relationship between SIRs occurring after an emotional experience and subsequent memory strength for that experience. The results are consistent with the possibility that emotional arousal leads both to elevated SIR frequency and better memory, and that the covert rehearsal associated with SIRs enhances memory for emotional relative to neutral stimuli. Additional evidence of menstrual cycle influences on SIR incidence in female participants appears to merit consideration in future work.     

Personality as Performance

Abstract— As people seek to understand events within the world, they develop habitual tendencies related to categorization. Such tendencies can be measured by tasks that determine the relative ease or difficulty a person has in making a given distinction (e.g., between threatening and nonthreatening events). Researchers have sought to determine how categorization tendencies relate to personality traits on the one hand and emotional outcomes on the other. The results indicate that traits and categorization tendencies are distinct manifestations of personality. However, they often interact with each other. Three distinct interactive patterns are described. Categorization clearly does play a role in personality functioning, but its role goes beyond assimilation effects on behavior and experience.     

Fighting death with death: the buffering effects of learning that worldview violators have died

According to terror management theory, the annihilation of people who threaten one's worldview should serve the function of defending that worldview. The present research assessed this hypothesis. A sample of Christian participants read either a worldview-threatening news article reporting on the Muslimization of Nazareth or a nonthreatening article about the aurora borealis. Half of the participants in the worldview-threat condition were informed at the end of the article that a number of Muslims had died in a plane crash on their way to Nazareth. Although reading the threatening news article increased death-thought accessibility and worldview defense relative to reading the neutral article, these increases were not observed among participants who learned that a number of Muslims were dead. Implications for understanding protracted intergroup conflict are discussed.     

Embodied temporal perception of emotion

The role of embodiment in the perception of the duration of emotional stimuli was investigated with a temporal bisection task. Previous research has shown that individuals overestimate the duration of emotional, compared with neutral, faces (S. Droit-Volet, S. Brunot, & P. M. Niedenthal, 2004). The authors tested a role for embodiment in this effect. Participants estimated the duration of angry, happy, and neutral faces by comparing them to 2 durations learned during a training phase. Experimental participants held a pen in their mouths so as to inhibit imitation of the faces, whereas control participants could imitate freely. Results revealed that participants overestimated the duration of emotional faces relative to the neutral faces only when imitation was possible. Implications for the role of embodiment in emotional perception are discussed.     

Children's emotions and memory for affective narrative content

The present study was an investigation of effects of emotional states on children's learning and memory for a short narrative. Happy, sad, or neutral moods were induced in 72 second-grade boys and girls by a standard affect induction procedure. This mood induction was accomplished either before or after they heard a story in which two protagonists encountered a variety of experiences having an affective character. For half of the subjects, the initial story event had a positive affective valence, and for half it was negative. Children's memory for events in the narrative was assessed immediately afterward, using measures offo free recall, cued recall, and recognition. Children recalled more affective content than neutral content, and boys recalled more than girls. Valence of the initial story item and sex of subject influenced the relationship between mood state and memory for story events. Under some conditions, positive moods reduced recognition accuracy for positive material. The findings suggest that simple patterns of mood-influenced memory found in previous studies are modified by factors such as characteristics of the learner and the organization of the material to be learned. The relationship between mood and memory thus appears to be more complex than previously recognized.This experiment was supported in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation (BNS-8308147) to John C. Masters. The authors wish to thank Bill Harris, Suzanne Chabaud, and Saneya Hassan for assistance in data collection and coding.     

Memory for time and place contributes to enhanced confidence in memories for emotional events

Emotion strengthens the subjective sense of remembering. However, these confidently remembered emotional memories have not been found be more accurate for some types of contextual details. We investigated whether the subjective sense of recollecting negative stimuli is coupled with enhanced memory accuracy for three specific types of central contextual details using the remember/know paradigm and confidence ratings. Our results indicate that the subjective sense of remembering is indeed coupled with better recollection of spatial location and temporal context, but not higher memory accuracy for colored dots placed in the conceptual center of negative and neutral scenes. These findings show that the enhanced subjective recollective experience for negative stimuli reliably indicates objective recollection for spatial location and temporal context, but not for other types of details, whereas for neutral stimuli, the subjective sense of remembering is coupled with all the types of details assessed. Translating this finding to flashbulb memories, we found that, over time, more participants correctly remembered the location where they learned about the terrorist attacks on 9/11 than any other canonical feature. Likewise, participants' confidence was higher in their memory for location versus other canonical features. These findings indicate that the strong recollective experience of a negative event corresponds to an accurate memory for some kinds of contextual details but not for other kinds. This discrepancy provides further evidence that the subjective sense of remembering negative events is driven by a different mechanism than the subjective sense of remembering neutral events.     

Collective memories of three wars in United States history in younger and older adults

A collective memory is a representation of the past that is shared by members of a group. We investigated similarities and differences in the collective memories of younger and older adults for three major wars in U.S. history (the Civil War, World War II, and the Iraq War). Both groups were alive during the recent Iraq War, but only the older subjects were alive during World War II, and both groups learned about the Civil War from historical sources. Subjects recalled the 10 most important events that occurred during each war and then evaluated the emotional valence, the relative importance, and their level of knowledge for each event. They also estimated the percentage of people that would share their memory of each event within their age group and the other age group. Although most historical events were recalled by fewer than 25 % of subjects, younger and older adults commonly recalled a core set of events for each war that conform to a narrative structure that may be fundamental to collective remembering. Younger adults showed greater consensus in the events that they recalled for all three wars, relative to older adults, but there was less consensus in both groups for the Iraq War. Whereas younger adults recalled more specific events of short duration, older adults recalled more extended and summarized events of long duration. Our study shows that collective memories can be studied empirically and can differ depending on whether the events are experienced personally or learned from historical sources.     

Emotion, memory, and attention in the taboo Stroop paradigm

This study tested the binding hypothesis: that emotional reactions trigger binding mechanisms that link an emotional event to salient contextual features such as event location, a frequently recalled aspect of naturally occurring flash-bulb memories. Our emotional events were taboo words in a Stroop color-naming task, and event location was manipulated by presenting the words in different task-irrelevant screen locations. Seventy-two participants named the font color of taboo and neutral words, with instructions to ignore word meaning; in one condition, several words were location consistent (i.e., always occupied the same screen location), whereas in another condition, several colors were location consistent. Then, in a surprise recognition memory test, participants recalled the locations of location-consistent words or colors. Although attention enhanced overall location memory for colors (the attended dimension during color naming), emotion (taboo vs. neutral words) enhanced location memory for words but not colors. These results support the binding hypothesis but contradict the hypothesis that emotional events induce image-like memories more often than non-emotional events.     

When time stands still: fear-specific modulation of temporal bias due to threat

The current study was designed to test the fear-specific nature of temporal bias due to threat. A temporal bisection procedure was used in which participants (N = 46) were initially trained to recognize short (400 ms) and long (1,600 ms) standard durations. In the test phase, participants were asked to judge whether the duration of computer-generated faces drawn to appear threatening, fearful, and neutral, was closer to either the short or long duration they had learnt earlier. Past research was replicated-the durations of the arousing facial expressions were overestimated relative to a low arousal (neutral) expression. Overestimation for threat was positively correlated with individual differences in fearfulness, trait anxiety, and distress. Multiple regression analyses were carried out to test the hypothesis was that individual differences in anxiety and fearfulness but not other traits would uniquely predict temporal overestimation due to threat. The results showed that fearfulness but not other traits (trait anxiety, anger, distress, activity, and sociability) was a unique and strong (partial r = .47) predictor of increased overestimation for both threatening and fearful expressions. The findings support the hypothesis that threat-related expressions activate a fear-specific system (?hman & Mineka, 2001) or fear representations (Beck & Clark, 1997) in fearful individuals.     

双加工再认提取中的情绪记忆增强效应

根据双加工理论, 再认提取可以划分为两种不同的加工：熟悉性与回想。以往的研究普遍认为情绪对再认提取具有增强效应, 但是情绪对再认记忆中两种不同加工方式(熟悉性与回想)的增强效应的神经机制尚存争议。本研究以ERP作为测量手段, 采用修正的“记得/知道”范式对情绪图片进行再认测验, 旨在探究在学习?测验间隔较长的条件下, 情绪信息如何对熟悉性与回想产生增强效应。在行为结果中, 对于知道判断, 情绪图片的记忆表现显著高于中性图片, 情绪效价间没有差异; 对于记得判断, 负性情绪图片的记忆表现要显著高于正性与中性图片。在ERP数据上, 对于知道判断, 情绪图片的FN400新旧效应有增强作用。对于记得判断, 负性图片的LPC的新旧效应波幅显著高于中性与负性图片; 而正性图片的LPC新旧效应增强作用不显著。以上证据表明：学习?测验间隔较长的情况下, 熟悉性再认提取中, 情绪记忆增强效应主要体现在情绪唤醒对记忆强度的提高, 而不仅仅体现在情绪效价对熟悉判断反应倾向的影响。在回想的再认提取中, 情绪效价的调节占据主导地位, 负性情绪图片有显著的情绪记忆增强效应; 正性情绪图片则不具有增强效应。     

Intentional memory and online data collection: A test of the effects of animacy and threat on episodic memory

As research in the behavioural sciences increasingly relies on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) for recruiting participants, it is an empirical question whether an intentional memory experiment could be conducted online and whether performance of MTurk participants and college students would be comparable. College students and MTurk participants viewed threatening and nonthreatening items that were animate or inanimate and completed a recall test. Recent research indicates that human memory systems evolved to prioritise survival-relevant information, including animacy of items. The results of both studies indicated that participants recalled more animate than inanimate items and recalled more threatening items than nonthreatening items. The results indicate that it is possible to conduct memory experiments online and that results match patterns found in laboratory studies of the animacy effect (Nairne, VanArsdall, Pandeirada, Cogdill, & LeBreton, 2013), but that researchers should include safeguards to ensure the online participants are attending to and following directions.     

Correlates of academic procrastination

Concurrent correlates of academic procrastination were investigated in Israeli college preparatory students (N = 113). Procrastination in one course of study was found to be moderately correlated with procrastination in another, but not to procrastination in the routine tasks of daily living. Evidence for the validity of self-report procrastination scales was the moderate correlation with instructors' ratings. Procrastination was weakly related to emotional upset about it and moderately related to the endorsement of reasons for it—students high in procrastination and emotional upset gave higher reason endorsements (i.e., cited suggested reasons as more reflective of the causes of their procrastination) than the others. Reasons that were judged a priori as less threatening to one's self-esteem received higher endorsements than threatening ones. Contrary to prediction, reasons considered nonthreatening to one's self-esteem were as strongly related to emotional upset and to procrastination as threatening reasons. That students vary in emotional upset about procrastination and in the reasons they give for it highlights the need for comprehensive assessment of students in planning and implementing treatment programs.