Effect of emotion on memory for words and their context

Abstract

Emotion influences various cognitive processes, such as memory. This beneficial or detrimental effect can be studied with verbal material, yet in this case a broad term of context has to be taken into account. The present work reviews recent literature and proposes that traditional differentiation between semantic and environmental context should be replaced with a novel conceptualization of hippocampus-dependent relational memory and item memory (related to the activations of cuneus and left amygdala). Additionally, instead of list-learning paradigms, words should be memorized in the context of sentences or stories for better control over their meaning. The recent evidence suggests that of particular importance for ecological validity in research paradigms is the presence of communicative and social context of verbal material related to such processes as theory of mind and brain activations in temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate cortex, and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex. We propose that studying memory of verbal material within context gives a better understanding of enhancing and impairing effects of emotion as well as of the underlying brain mechanisms.

Emotional salience of the image component facilitates recall of the text of cigarette warning labels

“…18,19 Some theories predict that information co-occurring with emotion will be better remembered, while others propose that the emotion would divert attention and processing resources away from the co-occurring verbal or textual information. 8,20 Our results concur with the former theory, as we demonstrate that emotional salience not only serves to enhance the memory of images, but also increase the likelihood that viewers will remember the text warnings associated with these images in the composite GWLs. This finding suggests a facilitation effect between the emotional salience of images and processing of textual warning statements.…”

What Is the Effect of Basic Emotions on Directed Forgetting? Investigating the Role of Basic Emotions in Memory

“…Emotionally arousing stimuli are better remembered than emotionally neutral ones ( Rubin and Friendly, 1986 ; Bradley et al, 1992 ; Palomba et al, 1997 ; Ochsner, 2000 ) and memories of emotional events have a persistence and vividness that other memories seem to lack ( Christianson, 1992 ). Memory advantage has been shown to be particularly strong for negative when compared to neutral stimuli (e.g., Danion et al, 1995 ; Phelps et al, 1997 ; Michalowski et al, 2014 ; Riegel et al, 2016a ). In addition, forgetting of negative stimuli is relatively more difficult than neutral stimuli ( Otani et al, 2012 ; Brandt et al, 2013 ).…”

Metabolic and hormone influences on emotion processing during menopause

“…This complexly interconnected region of the brain regulates visual information processing, with direct and indirect connections between visual cortex and limbic emotion regulation regions (De Benedictis et al, 2014). The posterior cingulate is also a highly interconnected cognitive association region, and has been implicated in memory retrieval of emotionally salient events (Maddock et al, 2003; Riegel et al, 2015). While women in all three menopause stage groups had similar measures of mood and affective state, women in the perimenopausal group were most likely to interpret emotionally neutral images as unpleasant, suggesting a negative interpretation bias.…”