Interactions of Emotion and Self-reference in Source Memory: An ERP Study

Abstract

The way emotional information is encoded (e.g., deciding whether it is self-related or not) has been found to affect source memory. However, few studies have addressed how the emotional quality and self-referential properties of a stimulus interactively modulate brain responses during stimulus encoding and source memory recognition. In the current study, 22 participants completed five study-test cycles with negative, neutral, and positive words encoded in self-referential versus non-self-referential conditions, while event-related potentials of the electroencephalogram were recorded. An advantage of self-referential processing in source memory performance, reflected in increased recognition accuracy, was shown for neutral and positive words. At the electrophysiological level, self-referential words elicited increased amplitudes in later processing stages during encoding (700-1,200 ms) and were associated with the emergence of old/new effects in the 300-500 ms latency window linked to familiarity effects. In the 500-800 ms latency window, old/new effects emerged for all valence conditions except for negative words studied in the non-self-referential condition. Negative self-referential words also elicited a greater mobilization of post-retrieval monitoring processes, reflected in an enhanced mean amplitude in the 800-1,200 ms latency window. Together, the current findings suggest that valence and self-reference interactively modulate source memory. Specifically, negative self-related information is more likely to interfere with the recollection of source memory features.

Development of self‐referential effect on memory recollection

“…However, Sui & Zhu used a free recall paradigm which, as previously mentioned, may result in different behavior than the present recognition design. Furthermore, some studies looking at source memory have found diminished SREs depending on the valence and nature, for example, spatial location versus color, of source details (Durbin et al, 2017;Pereira et al, 2019Pereira et al, , 2021Yin et al, 2019), further indicating the existence of task-specific effects.…”

The ownership memory self-reference effect shifts recognition criterion but not recognition sensitivity

“…By comparison, for the self-mother group, because they are Western participants, we expected an object mSRE such that recognition and source memory accuracy should be higher for self-than for mother-referenced objects. While Cunningham et al, 2013Cunningham et al, , 2014Pereira et al, 2021) have taken account of these differences in response mode and the refined information it generates about recall.…”

“…Some object mSRE studies have used a source-specific recognition task where participants responded 'Me,' 'Other', or 'New' during the memory test (Cunningham et al, 2011, Experiment 3;Cunningham et al, 2013;Cunningham et al, 2014;Pereira et al, 2021). Cunningham et al (2011) calculated sensitivity (d') based on unique self-owned and other-owned false alarm rates.…”

Neuronal and behavioral affective perceptions of human and naturalness-reduced emotional prosodies

“…Besides, contextual expectancies may alter word emotional understanding with stronger P200 and LPP responses when words are embedded into congruent emotional contexts (Chou et al, 2020). What is more, selfreferencing contexts may enhance emotional perception [see (Herbert et al, 2011) for effect on LPP amplitude], without which negative common words may hinder source memory performance, underscored by the absence of old/new item effect on ERP amplitude between 500 and 800 ms (Pereira et al, 2021). In sum, by highlighting the relevance of the whole epoch to link neuronal processing to behavioral emotional perception, our correlational analysis may have emphasized the interactive interplay between several representational levels during online emotional speech comprehension.…”