Influence of Emotion on Memory for Temporal Information.

Abstract

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.

Electrophysiological correlates of remembering emotional pictures

“…The current findings are consistent with previous studies that found an emotional modulation of the ERP old-new effect using alternative ways of tapping recollection (Inaba et al, 2007;Koenig and Mecklinger, 2008;Weymar et al, 2009). In addition, an interpretation based on the emotional modulation of recollection is consistent with extensive previous behavioral evidence showing that emotion can modulate the recollection of contextual information (Doerksen and Shimamura, 2001;D'Argembeau and Van der Linden, 2005;Kensinger and Schacter, 2005;Kensinger and Schacter, 2008). A possible alternative explanation could posit that the emotional modulation of the LPC might reflect an emotional modulation of memory strength without recollection of contextual details.…”

The effects of negative emotion on encoding-related neural activity predicting item and source recognition

“…Although some behavioural recognition studies using realistic pictures report an EEM effect using short study-test intervals (e.g. Brown and Schaefer, 2010;D'Argembeau and Van der Linden, 2005), the overall pattern of results in this field suggests that EEM effects on recognition memory are unstable and difficult to replicate when short intervals are used. Therefore, long study-test delays are often used in recognition studies to ensure that emotion has a reliable and large effect on recognition performance Ochsner, 2000, andTalmi, 2013).…”

“…These subprocesses are often thought to be the core components of recognition memory (Aggleton and Brown, 1999;Düzel et al, 1999;Mandler, 1980;Mecklinger, 2000;Rugg and Curran, 2007;Yonelinas, 1994;Yonelinas and Parks, 2007) and the question whether emotions can differentially modulate them is not fully settled . Some studies have found that emotion can enhance "source memory" performance (Croucher et al, 2011;D'Argembeau and Van der Linden, 2005;Doerksen and Shimamura, 2001;Murray and Kensinger, 2013). These results suggest that emotion can modulate recollection processes, given that source memory tasks require participants to retrieve information belonging to the context in which a central item has been encoded (Koenig and Mecklinger, 2008;Wilding andRugg, 1996, 1997;Yick and Wilding, 2014).…”

Temporal memory of emotional experience

“…Consequently, the role of emotion in the memory of past events has been a major focus of interest for studies on autobiographical and episodic memory. However, few studies have examined how we remember the duration of emotional events, even though this dimension is fundamental (D'Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2005). The purpose of the present study was thus to begin to investigate the memory for the duration of emotional events.…”