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Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to changes in the liking of an affectively neutral stimulus (the conditioned stimulus, or CS) following the pairing of that stimulus with another stimulus of affective value (the unconditioned stimulus, or US). In 3 experiments, the authors assessed contingency awareness, that is, awareness of the CS-US associations, by relying on participants' responses to individual items rather than using a global method of assessment. They found that EC emerged on contingency aware CSs only. Of note, whether the CSs were evaluated explicitly (Experiments 1 and 2) or implicitly (Experiment 3) did not make a difference. This pattern supports the idea that awareness of the CS-US associations may be required for valence acquisition via EC.

Flashbulb memories (FBMs) are detailed recollections of the context in which people first heard about important events. The present study investigates three models of the formation and maintenance of FBM. Two models have previously been proposed in the literature (Brown & Kulik, 1977;Conway et al., 1994). A third model of FBM that integrates theories ofFBM and recent developments in the field of emotions is proposed. The present study compares these three competing models by investigating the FBMs that Belgian citizens developed upon learning of the unexpected death of their king Baudouin. Structural equation modeling revealed that, as compared to the two previously proposed models, the third model, which takes into account emotional processes, better explains FBM.People have detailed memories for circumstances surrounding their discovery of important national events, such as assassinations of public figures (see, e.g., Brown & Kulik, 1977;Christianson, 1989;Colegrove, 1899;Winograd & Killinger, 1983). They remember the specifics of the context in which they first heard about the news: When they heard the news, where they were, what they were doing and with whom, and how they felt upon hearing the news are just a few of the details commonly remembered (see, e.g., Brown & Kulik, 1977). Brown and Kulik called this phenomenon flashbulb memories (FBMs) to indicate surprise and brevity. Even though FBMs are not as accurate or as permanent as the photographic metaphor suggests (Larsen, 1992;Neisser & Harsh, 1992), their forgetResearch reported in this paper was supported by FRFC Grant 8.4510.94. from the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research and by a grant from the Fonds de Developpement Scientifique of the University of Louvain. It was also facilitated by the support granted by the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, to the Consortium for European Research on Emotion (CERE). We gratefully acknowledge the help of Denise Philippot, Philippe Tilquin, and Annick Beerten in collecting the data. We also wish to thank Geoffrey R. Loftus and two anonymous reviewers who provided invaluablecomments and suggestions on an earlier draft. O. L. is Research Assistant at the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research. A.E. is now at the Department of Psychology, University of Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to C. Finkenauer, Department of Psychology, University of Louvain, Place Cardinal Mercier, 10, B-1348 Louvain-Ia-Neuve, Belgium (e-mail: finkenauer@clis. ucl.ac.be).-Accepted by previous editor, Geoffrey R. Loftus ting curve is far less affected by time than in the case of other types of memories investigated in basic memory research (Bohannon & Symons, 1992;Christianson, 1989; McCloskey, Wible, & Cohen, 1988;Pillemer, 1984).FBMs are cases of autobiographical memories. Because it is well established that emotions have an important influence on autobiographical memory (see, e.g., Conway, 1990;Nigro & Neisser, 1983;Robinson, 1980), it is imperative to cons...

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Alexithymia is characterized by difficulties in identifying, differentiating and describing feelings. A high prevalence of alexithymia has often been observed in clinical disorders characterized by low social functioning. This review aims to assess the association between alexithymia and the ability to decode emotional facial expressions (EFEs) within clinical and healthy populations. More precisely, this review has four main objectives: (1) to assess if alexithymia is a better predictor of the ability to decode EFEs than the diagnosis of clinical disorder; (2) to assess the influence of comorbid factors (depression and anxiety disorder) on the ability to decode EFE; (3) to investigate if deficits in decoding EFEs are specific to some levels of processing or task types; (4) to investigate if the deficits are specific to particular EFEs. Twenty four studies (behavioural and neuroimaging) were identified through a computerized literature search of Psycinfo, PubMed, and Web of Science databases from 1990 to 2010. Data on methodology, clinical characteristics, and possible confounds were analyzed. The review revealed that: (1) alexithymia is associated with deficits in labelling EFEs among clinical disorders, (2) the level of depression and anxiety partially account for the decoding deficits, (3) alexithymia is associated with reduced perceptual abilities, and is likely to be associated with impaired semantic representations of emotional concepts, and (4) alexithymia is associated with neither specific EFEs nor a specific valence. These studies are discussed with respect to processes involved in the recognition of EFEs. Future directions for research on emotion perception are also discussed.