The emotion-induced memory trade-off: More than an effect of overt attention?

Abstract

Although it has been suggested that many effects of emotion on memory are attributable to attention, in the present study we addressed the hypothesis that such effects may relate to a number of different factors during encoding or postencoding. One way to look at the effects of emotion on memory is by examining the emotion-induced memory trade-off, whereby enhanced memory for emotional items often comes at the cost of memory for surrounding background information. We present evidence that this trade-off cannot be explained solely by overt attention (measured via eyetracking) directed to the emotional items during encoding. Participants did not devote more overt attention to emotional than to neutral items when those items were selectively remembered (at the expense of their backgrounds). Only when participants were asked to answer true/false questions about the items and the backgrounds-a manipulation designed to affect both overt attention and poststimulus elaboration-was there a reduction in selective emotional item memory due to an increase in background memory. These results indicate that the allocation of overt visual attention during encoding is not sufficient to predict the occurrence of selective item memory for emotional items.Keywords Memory . Attention . Emotion . Eye-tracking Emotional information is usually remembered better than neutral information (see Reisberg & Heuer, 2004), but the mechanisms behind this enhancement are still unclear. The increased memory for emotional information may be due to a number of different factors. For example, emotional stimuli may be more likely to attract and sustain attention (Anderson, 2005;Calvo & Lang, 2004), and emotional stimuli may also be more likely to evoke cognitive processing, elaboration, and rehearsal (Hamann, 2001;Libkuman, Stabler, & Otani, 2004).Many studies have provided evidence for the emotional prioritization of attention. People are quicker to notice emotional information within a visual array (Öhman, Flykt, & Esteves, 2001), are more likely to notice emotional words that are presented very quickly (Anderson & Phelps, 2001), and are more susceptible to interference from emotional than from neutral distractors (McKenna & Sharma, 1995;Schimmack & Derryberry, 2005). These behavioral effects of emotion on attention have also been shown in studies that have used eye gaze as a measure of overt visual attention: People tend to fixate first and to look longer at emotional pictures that are presented side by side with neutral pictures (Calvo & Lang, 2004;Nummenmaa, Hyönä, & Calvo, 2006). In addition, people fixate longer on irrelevant emotional distractor pictures than on neutral ones (Bannerman, Milders, & Sahraie, 2009;Calvo & Lang, 2004;Koster, Crombez, Verschuere, & De Houwer, 2004;Nummenmaa et al., 2006;Sarter, Givens, & Bruno, 2001). Thus, it seems that attention is initially focused on emotional information and that it is harder for participants to disengage attention from that information.The attention mediation hypothesis of the emoti...

The benefits of emotional stimuli in a virtual reality cognitive and motor rehabilitation task: Assessing the impact of positive, negative and neutral stimuli with stroke patients

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