Relations between emotion, memory, and attention: Evidence from taboo Stroop, lexical decision, and immediate memory tasks

Abstract

474This study demonstrates six interrelated effects of emotion on attention and memory. The main one is the taboo Stroop effect: When people name the color of randomly intermixed taboo and neutral words, color-naming times are longer for taboo than for neutral words (Siegrist, 1995). The taboo Stroop effect shares characteristics with two other effects, known as the clinical and the emotional Stroop effects. The clinical Stroop effect occurs when patients with a particular affective disorder (e.g., spiderphobia) name the colors of words that are either phobia related (e.g., web) or phobia unrelated (e.g., wet): Colornaming times are longer for the patients than for the normal controls, but only for the phobia-related words (e.g., Dalgleish & Watts, 1990;Mathews & MacLeod, 1985;Richards & Millwood, 1989;Watts, McKenna, Sharrock, & Tresize, 1986). However, unlike taboo Stroop effects, which are robust across experimental contexts and are not confined to individuals suffering from clinical disorders, clinical Stroop effects (for a review, see Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996) are often small, difficult to replicate (see MacLeod & Hodder, 1998), context specific (e.g., readily observable with blocked, but not with randomly intermixed, emotional and unemotional words; see Richards, French, Johnson, Naparstek, & Williams, 1992), and variable (e.g., holding for some types of clinical traits and emotional disorders, but not for others; see Matthews & Harley, 1996).A closer relative of the taboo Stroop effect is the emotional Stroop effect, the fact that people take longer to name the color of unpleasant words (e.g., grief, fail, fear, and death) than that of neutral words (see, e.g., Sharma & McKenna, 2001;Whalen et al., 1998). Unlike taboo Stroop effects, time pressure (240 msec or less between prior response and subsequent color word) may be essential for observing emotional Stroop effects (see Sharma & McKenna, 2001). Moreover, the label emotional Stroop effect may be inappropriate: Repeated failures to demonstrate emotional Stroop effects for pleasant words suggest that negative affect, rather than emotionality per se, may underlie emotional Stroop effects (see McKenna & Sharma, 1995;Richards & Millwood, 1989). Despite these complications, clinical and emotional Stroop effects have stimulated development of a global resource theory of emotion and attention, which we will outline next in order to frame the general issues that motivated the present experiments.Under the theory, emotional reactions "soak up processing resources" (Bower, 1992, p. 17), and clinical and emotional Stroop effects occur when limited-capacity attentional resources are allocated to threatening stimuli, thereby reducing resources available for processing and responding to other stimuli (e.g., font color). If one applies this basic logic to taboo words, by attracting attentional resources, taboo words will slow down color naming, rela- This article reports five experiments demonstrating theoretically coherent effects of emotion on memory and a...

Arousal-enhanced location memory for pictures

“…This arousal-enhanced location binding for pictures appears to be a highly reliable effect and is consistent with previous studies showing better memory for the color or location of emotional than neutral words (Kensinger & Corkin, 2003;D'Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2004;Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001;MacKay et al, 2004;MacKay & Ahmetzanov, 2005). In addition, because the enhancement in location memory occurred for both positive and negative arousing pictures, this study reveals that arousal is the critical factor, rather than valence.…”

“…These typically either involve sequences with just one arousing item (Hurlemann et al, 2005;Strange et al, 2003;Schmidt, 2002;Erdelyi & Blumenthal, 1973;Detterman & Ellis, 1972;Ellis et al, 1971;Runcie & O'Bannon, 1977;MacKay et al, 2004) or rapid serial visual presentation without responses required from the participants until the end of the list (Hadley & MacKay, 2006). The current findings suggest that this type of arousal-based interference seen for item memory will not extend to item-location conjunction memory.…”

“…The Mather et al findings suggest that maintaining multiple highly arousing representations in working memory leads to disruptions in binding, whereas previous findings suggest that arousal enhances source memory when items are seen one at a time and there is no requirement to keep them active in working memory (MacKay & Ahmetzanov, 2005;MacKay et al, 2004;Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001;D'Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2004). However, it is possible that the contrast between the two patterns of results could be the result of differences in the impact of pictures versus words rather than the difference between maintaining competing representations in working memory and just processing stimuli while they are seen on the screen.…”

“…However, initial data from laboratory studies reveal that people are better at remembering the color or location of emotional or taboo words than of neutral words (Kensinger & Corkin, 2003;D'Argembeau & Van der Linden, 2004;Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001;MacKay et al, 2004;MacKay & Ahmetzanov, 2005). The presentation rates and encoding tasks varied across these studies, but in each one, participants saw an intermixed list of emotional and neutral words, with words presented one at a time.…”

“…A number of studies have shown that arousing stimuli can interfere with memory for spatially or temporally nearby neutral items (Bornstein, Liebel, & Scarberry, 1998;Detterman & Ellis, 1972;Ellis et al, 1971;Erdelyi & Blumenthal, 1973;Hadley & MacKay, 2006;Hurlemann et al, 2005;Johnson et al, 2005;MacKay et al, 2004;Miu, Heilman, Opre, & Miclea, 2005;Runcie & O'Bannon, 1977;Schmidt, 2002;Strange, Hurlemann, & Dolan, 2003). Although some of these studies used very rapid presentation, item memory impairment for temporally adjacent items also has been found with up to three or four seconds between the arousing and neutral items (Detterman & Ellis, 1972;Hurlemann et al, 2005;Runcie & O'Bannon, 1977) and sometimes even for items appearing six seconds after an arousing item (Schmidt, 2002).…”