Emotional Arousal and Memory Binding: An Object-Based Framework

Mather, Mara

doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00028.x

Cited by 412 publications

(511 citation statements)

References 252 publications

(393 reference statements)

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“…Recall that earlier research has produced mixed results for negatively valenced material -sometimes it was better recalled later than earlier and sometimes the reverse was true (Eysenck, 1977;Mather, 2007). Recently, LaBar and Cabeza (2006) have indicated that memory for emotional information is better than memory for neutral information when tested days rather than minutes following study.…”

Section: Recallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Valence and the development of immediate and long-term false memory illusions

Howe

Candel

Otgaar

et al. 2010

Memory

126

151

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. and children's (Experiment 2) true recall and recognition was better for neutral than negative items and although false recall was also higher for neutral items, false recognition was higher for negative items. The last three experiments examined adults' (Experiment 3) and children's (Experiments 4 and 5) one-week long-term recognition of neutral and negative-emotional information. The results replicated the immediate recall and recognition findings from the first two experiments. More important, these experiments showed that although true recognition decreased over the one-week interval, false recognition of neutral items remained unchanged whereas false recognition of negative-emotional items increased. These findings are discussed in terms of theories of emotion and memory as well as their forensic implications. Permanent repository linkKeywords: Valence and memory; False memory development; DRM paradigmValence and the Development of Immediate and Long-Term False Memory Illusions Our memory is a reconstructive process in which errors often occur (for an overview see Koriat, Goldsmith, & Pansky, 2000). That means that we might falsely remember details that we in fact did not encounter. In recent years, the development of false memories has been extensively studied with the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Deese, 1959;Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Using this paradigm, participants are presented with word lists that consist of close semantic associates of a non-presented critical lure. For example, a list might consist of the words door, glass, pane, shade, ledge, sill, house, open, curtain, frame, view, breeze, sash, screen, and shutter which are all related to the non-presented word window. Studies have shown that participants have the tendency to falsely recall and recognize the critical lures during subsequent memory tests (for an overview see Gallo, 2006). Another robust finding obtained with the DRM paradigm is a reverse age effect. Specifically, studies have shown that the development of spontaneous false memories increases as a function of age (e.g., Brainerd, Reyna, & Brandse, 1995;Howe, 2005Howe, , 2006Howe, , 2008Sugrue & Hayne, 2006). The low levels of spontaneous false memories found in young children may be due to a failure to automatically access associative relations between list items and the critical lure (associative-activation theory, or AAT, e.g., Howe, 2005Howe, , 2008Howe, Gagnon, & Thouas, 2008;Howe, Wimmer, & Blease, 2009a;Howe, Wimmer, Gagnon, & Plumpton, 2009b) or to extract gist memories across words on DRM lists (fuzzy-trace theory, or FTT, e.g., Brainerd & Reyna, 2005).Despite the robust findings produced by the DRM paradigm, researchers have questioned the ecological validity of this paradigm (Freyd & Gleaves, 1996). One concern raised by Freyd and Gleaves is that in real world scenarios false memories often involve emotional events. To address this concer...

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Section: Recallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Valence and the development of immediate and long-term false memory illusions

Howe

Candel

Otgaar

et al. 2010

Memory

126

151

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…In contrast, when the task is to find any target that contains one of the two features, increasing the number of objects in the display does not slow people's search down much, indicating that they do not have to look at each object to detect their individual features (Treisman & Gelade, 1980). These findings about the role of attention in binding suggest that emotionally arousing stimuli might be more effectively bound with their features in initial perception, insofar as they elicit more intense focused attention (for a review see Mather, 2007). Previous studies have shown enhanced initial perceptual processing for emotional stimuli, as they are more likely than nonemotional stimuli to be correctly identified when shown very briefly (Zeelenberg, Wagenmakers, & Rotteveel, 2006) and less likely to be missed when presented in a rapid serial visual presentation with other stimuli (Anderson, 2005;Keil & Ihssen, 2004).…”

Section: Mechanisms Of Arousal-enhanced Bindingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arousal-enhanced location memory for pictures

Mather

Nesmith

2008

Journal of Memory and Language

Self Cite

128

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Four experiments revealed arousal-enhanced location memory for pictures. After an incidental encoding task, participants were more likely to remember the locations of positive and negative arousing pictures than the locations of non-arousing pictures, indicating better binding of location to picture. This arousal-enhanced binding effect did not have a cost for the binding of nearby pictures to their locations. Thus, arousal can enhance binding of an arousing picture's content to its location without interfering with picture-location binding for nearby pictures. In addition, arousal-enhanced picture-location memory binding is not just a side effect of enhanced memory for the picture itself, as it occurs both when recognition memory is good and when it is poor. Keywords memory binding; arousal; emotion; location; interference Emotionally arousing events are more likely to be recalled later than non-arousing events. This emotional memory enhancement has been demonstrated in many lab studies using stimuli such as pictures and words (

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“…These results suggest that emotional processing in older adults may be altered as a consequence of play an important role especially through its general support of neural compensation. As age advances, episodic memory performance tends to decline, even in the absence of pathology, and these changes have been associated with reduced efficiency of the hippocampus, which plays a critical role in memory consolidation (Wixted, 2004) and the binding of emotional information (Mather, 2007). This decline in general memory and hippocampal function may be, at least in part, moderated by cognitive reserve, which has been shown to associate with greater efficiency of compensatory neural networks (Steffener, Reuben, Rakitin & Stern, 2011) as well as to moderate hippocampal atrophy (Valenzuela, Sachdev, Wen, Chen & Brodaty, 2008).…”

Section: Cognitive Reserve and Positivity Effect 15mentioning

confidence: 99%