Episodic recollection allows people to vividly re-experience past events. The remembered information can then inform and guide behavior in the present, especially in the case of emotional events. One way to fulfill this adaptive memory function might be through psychophysiological responses that signal desirable and undesirable outcomes and thereby motivate behavior. However, it remains unknown whether the recollection of past emotional experiences can indeed re-elicit corresponding affective psychophysiological responses. We addressed this question in two experiments (N1 = 48, N2 = 41). Young adults watched positive, negative, and neutral movie clips. One day later, they were instructed to remember these episodes. To index the psychophysiological expression of positive and negative affect, we measured smiling (zygomaticus major) and frowning (corrugator supercilii) responses, respectively. Results revealed that participants smiled more when remembering positive compared to neutral and negative memories. Moreover, they frowned more when remembering negative compared to positive but not neutral memories. Interestingly, the intensity of smiling or frowning during remembering was not related to the intensity during the original experience. Our results suggest that affective psychophysiological responses might play a crucial role in the adaptive function of episodic memories. Therefore, future studies on emotional episodic memory could benefit from incorporating psychophysiological indices.
Maladaptive emotional memories are a transdiagnostic feature of mental health problems. Therefore, understanding whether and how emotional memories can change might help to prevent and treat mental disorders. We tested whether neutral memories of naturalistic events can retroactively acquire positive or negative affect, in a preregistered three-day Modification of Valence in Episodes (MOVIE) paradigm. On Day 1, participants (N = 41) encoded memories of neutral movie scenes, representing lifelike naturalistic experiences. On Day 2, they retrieved each episode before viewing a happy, sad, or neutral scene from the same movie (resulting in a neutral-negative, neutral-positive, and neutral-neutral condition). On Day 3, participants again retrieved each memory from Day 1. We assessed the affective tone of episodes through facial expressions of positive and negative affect and through self-reported feelings. Positive updating of neutral episodes led to increased expressions of positive affect, whereas negative updating led to increased self-reported negative feelings. These results suggest that complex neutral episodic memories can retroactively acquire an affective tone, but the effects were modest and inconsistent across affect readouts. Future research should investigate alternative approaches to updating emotional memories that produce more profound changes in the valence of memories.
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