Remembering emotional events: The fate of detailed information

Christianson, Sven‐Åke; Loftus, Elizabeth F.

doi:10.1080/02699939108411027

Cited by 341 publications

(246 citation statements)

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“…For example, Heuer and Reisberg (1990) used a distinction between plot-relevant and plot-irrelevant materials in distinguishing central and peripheral information; they found that arousal improved memory for both of these categories of information. In contrast, Christianson and Loftus (1991) report that arousal improved memory for central materials, but at the cost of memory for peripheral information. However, in their study, detail that was merely "associated with" central characters in the plot (e.g., the color of the central character's coat) was defined as central, even if this detail was plot irrelevant.…”

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“…Most of the studies showing negative effects of arousal (that is, better memory by the control subjects) have employed short retention intervals. For example, Christianson (1984), Christianson and Loftus (1991), Clifford and Hollin (1981), Clifford and Scott (1978), Deffenbacher (1983), Kebeck and Lohaus (1986), Loftus and Bums (1982) and Siegel and Loftus (1978) all report evidence that emotional arousal undermines memory accuracy, and all employed retention intervals under I h. In contrast, a number of authors have employed retention intervals of 2 weeks or longer, and they report that arousal improves memory for detail (Andrews, 1990, Studies I and 2;Christianson, 1984;Dorman, 1989;Heuer & Reisberg, 1990;Snyder, 1989).We need to be cautious, however, about drawing conclusions from this pattern across diverse studies. Fortunately, a few studies have directly examined the interaction between emotional arousal and retention interval.…”

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Remembering emotional events

1992

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Recent experiments have implied that emotional arousal causes a narrowing of attention and, therefore, impoverished memory encoding. In contrast, other studies have found that emotional arousal enhances memory for all aspects of an event. We report two experiments investigating whether these differing results are due to the different retention intervals employed in past studies or to their different categorization schemes for the to-be-remembered material. Our results indicate a small role for retention interval in moderating emotion's effects on memory. However, emotion had markedly different impacts on different types of material: Emotion improved memory for gist and basic-level visual information and for plot-irrelevant details associated, both temporally and spatially, with the event's center. In contrast, emotion undermined memory for details not associated with the event's center. The mechanisms for emotion's effects are discussed.The emotional events in one's life tend to be remembered with great clarity and detail (e.g., Bohannon, 1988; Brown & Kulik, 1977;Pillemer, 1984;Reisberg, Heuer, McLean, & O'Shaughnessy, 1988;Rubin & Kozin, 1984;White, 1989). But how accurate are these memories? There are a number of cases in which conspicuous errors have been documented in the recall of emotional events, despite the great vividness and high confidence attached to these memories (Christianson, 1989; Linton, 1975, pp. 386-387; McCloskey, Wible, & Cohen, 1988;Neisser, 1982;Neisser & Harsch, 1990;Wagenaar & Groeneweg, 1990). Apparently, neither emotionality nor vividness provides any guarantee of memory accuracy.In fact, there is reason to believe that emotional events may be remembered less completely than neutral events.According to the Easterbrook hypothesis, physiological arousal leads to a "narrowing" of attention-that is, a reduction in the range of cues to which an organism is sensitive (e.g., Bruner, Matter, & Papanek, 1955;Easterbrook, 1959;Eysenck, 1982;Mandler, 1975). Since arousal generally accompanies emotion, emotion should also lead to this narrowing of attention. This should in tum lead to impoverished memories, since the "center" of the event might be well remembered, but little else will be. If, therefore, many details are subsequently recalled, these are likely to be after-the-fact reconstructions and, thus, open to error. A number of studies have examined these claims, but with conflicting results. Much of the research has examined memory for specific details about emotional events (color of clothing, details of background, etc.). It is This research was supported by funds from the Pew Charitable Trust and from Reed College. We thank Ben Harper for his help in completing Experiment I, and Audrey Wessler for her help in completing Experiment 2. Requests for reprints should be sent to the third author at Psychology Department, Reed College, Portland OR 97202 (e-mail: reisberg@reed.edu).presumably just these details that might be excluded by the hypothesized narrowing of attention. These specific ...

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Remembering emotional events

1992

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“…Many studies have indicated that emotionality has two effects on memory: First, emotion seems to improve memory for the gist of an event and, also, for details closely associated with this gist (e.g., the exact appearance of characters central to the plot or the details of objects that were perceptually prominent within the scene). Second, emotion seems to undermine memory for more peripheral aspects of the event, including any details not closely tied to the event's main actors or objects and, also, details spatially in the background (see, e.g., Burke, Heuer, & Reisberg, 1992;Christianson & Loftus, 1987, 1991Wessel & Merckelbach, 1997; see Reisberg & Heuer, 2004, for a review).…”

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Memory for thematically arousing events

et al. 2004

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Many studies have indicated that emotional arousal improves memory for the center, or gist, of an event but undermines memory for the event's periphery. However, all of these studies have elicited emotion by showing participants some salient visual stimulus intended to arouse them (e.g., the sight of a wound). This stimulus may have served as an attention magnet, and this, not the arousal, may have been the cause of the observed narrowing of memory. In this article, we examine how participants remember events that involve thematically induced arousal, arousal produced by empathy, rather than by a visual emotional stimulus. The data show that emotionality improves memory for all aspects of these events, with no memory narrowing.

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“…In addition, highly arousing negative stimuli activated processes that were more stimulus-driven than low arousal stimuli which activated more goal-driven processes and the PFC to a greater extent (Knight & Mather, 2006). Arousal may enhance memory for central and vivid information, but it results in decrements for peripheral information (Christianson & Loftus, 1991). Kensinger and colleagues (2005) found that emotional enhancement matters for both older and younger adults, but that task instructions influence younger adults to a greater extent.…”

Section: Emotional Memory Enhancementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age Differences in Arousal, Perception of Affective Pictures, and Emotional Memory Enhancement: Appraisal, Electrodermal Activity, and Imaging Data

Gavazzeni¹

2008

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Remembering emotional events: The fate of detailed information

Cited by 341 publications

References 15 publications

Remembering emotional events

Remembering emotional events

Memory for thematically arousing events

Age Differences in Arousal, Perception of Affective Pictures, and Emotional Memory Enhancement: Appraisal, Electrodermal Activity, and Imaging Data

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