“I’ll remember this!” Effects of emotionality on memory predictions versus memory performance

Zimmerman, Carissa A.; Kelley, Colleen M.

doi:10.1016/j.jml.2009.11.004

Cited by 110 publications

(143 citation statements)

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“…These studies could also further assess the effects of emotional arousal on agerelated differences in episodic memory for component items and their associations, as well as evaluate the role of changes in the allocation of attention to item and associative memory as a result of emotionally arousing information. Specifically, recent research has suggested that test forms may be differentially sensitive to distinctions between positive and negative materials (Zimmerman & Kelley, 2010); thus, the present study could be replicated with cued or free recall testing to examine young and older adults' sensitivity to positive and negative associations. Additionally, given the gender differences observed in our older adult group, it would also be interesting to consider potential gender differences in metamemory and how gender differences may influence memory performance when monitoring and strategy selection are emphasized (e.g., value-directed remembering; Castel, 2008).…”

Section: Itemmentioning

confidence: 94%

The effects of emotional arousal and gender on the associative memory deficit of older adults

et al. 2011

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In this study we assessed the potential moderating roles of stimulus type (emotionally arousing) and participants' characteristics (gender) in older adults' associative memory deficit. In two experiments, young and older participants studied lists that included neutral and emotionally arousing word pairs (positive and negative) and completed recognition tests for the words and their associations. In Experiment 1, the majority of the word pairs were composed of two nouns, whereas in Experiment 2 they were composed of adjective-noun pairs. The results extend evidence for older adults' associative deficit and suggest that older and younger adults' item memory is improved for emotionally arousing words. However, associative memory for the word pairs did not benefit (and even showed a slight decline) from emotionally arousing words, which was the case for both younger and older adults. In addition, in these experiments, gender appeared to moderate the associative deficit of older adults, with older males but not females demonstrating this deficit.Keywords Aging . Episodic memory . Associative memory . Gender . ArousalOne issue that continues to pervade aging research is the problem of fully explaining why episodic memory declines across the lifespan. It is essential to understand the nature of this decline in order to help older adults maintain functionality throughout their lives. Previous work has suggested a number of contributing factors to this episodic memory decline, including deficits in semantic processing, metamemory, and deliberate recollection (see Light, 1991). Other theories have suggested that episodic memory problems may be the result of global declines in functions such as processing speed (Salthouse, 1996), attentional resources (Craik, 1983(Craik, , 1986, or inhibitory control (Hasher & Zacks, 1988) that have broader consequences for cognition.Of particular interest in the present study is the reduced ability in later adulthood to properly bind and associate items at encoding and to retrieve those associations at a later time, suggested as one potential mechanism underlying age-related episodic memory decline (e.g., Chalfonte & Johnson, 1996;Naveh-Benjamin, 2000;Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008a). The aims of the present study were to assess the effect of emotional arousal on the associative-binding deficit of older adults and to consider potential gender differences that may exist in older adults' associative memory. Each of these issues will be addressed in turn. Associative-binding deficit and episodic memory in agingChalfonte and Johnson (1996) investigated memory for complex events and their individual features in young and older adults. Their results showed a disproportionate decline in the older adult group for memories involving the binding of stimulus features (a picture, its color, and its location) relative to the decline in memory for each separate feature. This finding is in line with Naveh-Benjamin's (2000) associative-deficit hypothesis, which claims that a central factor in episo...

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Section: Itemmentioning

confidence: 94%

The effects of emotional arousal and gender on the associative memory deficit of older adults

et al. 2011

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“…Prominent examples are the emotional Stroop (Dresler, Mériau, Heekeren, & van der Meer, 2009;Phaf & Kan, 2007;Thomas, Johnstone, & Gonsalvez, 2007), the recognition memory test (Grider & Malmberg, 2008;Võ et al, 2008;Zimmermann & Kelley, 2010), the lexical decision task (LDT, Kuchinke, Võ, Hofmann, & Jacobs, 2007;Schacht & Sommer, 2009;Scott, O'Donnell, Leuthold, & Sereno, 2009), naming (Estes & Adelman, 2008;Simpson, Snyder, Gusnard, & Raichle, 2001), verb generation (e.g., Simpson et al, 2001), or word-stem completion (Danion, Kauffmann-Muller, Grangé, Zimmermann, & Greth, 1995). However, because numerous variables are known to influence visual word processing (Graf, Nagler, & Jacobs, 2005), well-controlled and reliable emotion-inducing stimulus material is necessary in order to produce interpretable effects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discrete emotion norms for nouns: Berlin affective word list (DENN–BAWL)

2011

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“…However, given the results of our other two experiments and the fact that arousal did not actually influence recall, it seems unlikely that these JOL differences reflect an implicit interpretation of the physiological effects of arousal. Rather, a cognitive explanation is more likely: Higher JOLs for high-arousal words were driven by the contrast to the low-arousal words in the mixed-list design, coupled with participants' belief that these high-arousal experiences would be more memorable than lower-arousal experiences (Tauber & Dunlosky, 2012;Zimmerman & Kelley, 2010).Indeed, Experiment 2 provided strong evidence against an explanation based purely on physiological arousal: Participants gave higher JOLs to negative-valence words than to neutral-valence words, even though both word types had equivalent, moderate levels of arousal. This result rules out a direct effect of physiological arousal and suggests that, instead, participants were likely consciously responding to valence on the basis of its distinctiveness in the discrete-levels, mixed-list context.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These competing predictions have not been directly tested. The few studies on metamemory for emotional words (Tauber & Dunlosky, 2012;Zimmerman & Kelley, 2010) have all used mixed-list designs in which the lists were composed of discrete categories of emotional and neutral words, which may have highlighted the emotional words by contrast to the neutral words. One set of studies-those by Tauber and Dunlosky (2012)-did vary the number of categories across experiments (positive, neutral, and negative versus only positive and neutral or only negative and neutral) and found no effect of this variable on JOLs.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Note, however, that the results of these two experiments do not necessarily mean that arousal can never influence JOLs through implicit interpretation of a physiological response. For instance, it is possible that cognitive and physiological factors have an interactive influence, such that implicit arousal effects combine with explicit valence effects to produce higher JOLs for emotional words (Tauber & Dunlosky, 2012;Zimmerman & Kelley, 2010).To more clearly determine whether physiological or cognitive factors primarily influence the JOLs for emotional words, in Experiment 3 we used the list structure to reduce or eliminate the influence that cognitive factors could potentially exert on recall prediction. Experiment 3 also addressed the limitation that, to this point, we have considered only certain ranges and combinations of arousal and valence.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The influences of valence and arousal on judgments of learning and on recall

2016

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Much is known about how the emotional content of words affects memory for those words, but only recently have researchers begun to investigate whether emotional content influences metamemory-that is, learners' assessments of what is or is not memorable. The present study replicated recent work demonstrating that judgments of learning (JOLs) do indeed reflect the superior memorability of words with emotional content. We further contrasted two hypotheses regarding this effect: a physiological account in which emotional words are judged to be more memorable because of their arousing properties, versus a cognitive account in which emotional words are judged to be more memorable because of their cognitive distinctiveness. Two results supported the latter account. First, both normed arousal (Exp. 1) and normed valence (Exp. 2) independently influenced JOLs, even though only an effect of arousal would be expected under a physiological account. Second, emotional content no longer influenced JOLs in a design (Exp. 3) that reduced the primary distinctiveness of emotional words by using a single list of words in which normed valence and arousal were varied continuously. These results suggest that the metamnemonic benefit of emotional words likely stems from cognitive factors.Keywords Emotion . Metamemory . RecallEmotion is a fundamental aspect of the human experience, and understanding how emotion influences our cognitive processes is an essential component of understanding cognition in general (Mandler, 1975). Emotional effects on memory could include memory for an emotional event, memory for neutral stimuli encountered while in an emotional state, and memory for emotional content encountered in a neutral state. Here, we consider the lattermost of these scenarios: how the emotional content of material encountered in an otherwise neutral state influences subsequent memory and metamemory.We frequently encounter situations in which we learn and remember emotional information, such as when we read a news article recounting a natural disaster or celebration, or when we encounter emotionally evocative literature. Generally, emotional information is remembered better than neutral information (see Kensinger, 2009;Levine & Edelstein, 2009, for reviews); this has been observed with both pictures (e.g., Bradley, Greenwald, Petry, & Lang, 1992) and words (e.g., Kensinger & Corkin, 2003). In the present study, we examined whether and how emotion influences our predictions of future recall, and what these findings imply about the processes by which emotion influences memory and metamemory. Metamemory for emotional informationDespite the vast amount of research examining memory for emotional information, relatively little research has focused on how metamemory (i.e., the monitoring and control of memory) is influenced by emotion. Some general evidence (Tauber & Dunlosky, 2012;Zimmerman & Kelley, 2010) Mem Cogn (2017) 45:121-136 DOI 10.3758/s13421-016-0646-3 below, suggests that learners' predictions of recall can be sensit...

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“I’ll remember this!” Effects of emotionality on memory predictions versus memory performance

Cited by 110 publications

References 79 publications

The effects of emotional arousal and gender on the associative memory deficit of older adults

The effects of emotional arousal and gender on the associative memory deficit of older adults

Discrete emotion norms for nouns: Berlin affective word list (DENN–BAWL)

The influences of valence and arousal on judgments of learning and on recall

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