Emotional state dynamics impacts temporal memory

Abstract

Emotional fluctuations are ubiquitous in everyday life, but precisely how they sculpt the temporal organization of memories remains unclear. Here, we designed a novel task-the Emotion Boundary Task-wherein participants viewed sequences of negative and neutral images surrounded by a color border. We manipulated perceptual context (border color), emotional valence, as well as the direction of emotional-valence shifts (i.e., transitions from neutral-to-negative and negative-to-neutral events). We measured memory for temporal order and subjectively remembered temporal distances for images processed within and across events. Negative images processed within events were remembered as closer in time compared to neutral ones. In contrast, temporal distance was remembered as longer for images spanning neutral-to-negative transitions-suggesting temporal dilation in memory with the onset of a negative event following a previously-neutral state. The extent of this negative-picture induced temporal dilation in memory correlated with dispositional negativity across individuals. Lastly, temporal order memory was enhanced for recently presented negative (compared to neutral) images. These findings suggest that emotional-state dynamics matters when considering emotion-temporal memory interactions: While persistent negative events may compress subjectively remembered time, dynamic shifts from neutral to negative events produce temporal dilation in memory, which may be relevant for adaptive emotional functioning.

Goal shifts structure memories and prioritize event-defining information in long- term memory

“…Do the number or the kind of change present at the boundary have differential effects on the organization of information in long-term memory? Event segmentation effects in memory have been shown using various types of context shifts, including changes in perceptual features (Clewett et al, 2020;Ezzyat & Davachi, 2014;Heusser et al, 2018), task demands (DuBrow & Davachi, 2013; Y. C. Wang & Egner, 2022;Wen & Egner, 2022), linguistic narratives (Ezzyat & Davachi, 2011), spatial contexts (Brunec et al, 2018(Brunec et al, , 2020Horner et al, 2016), emotional images, auditory tones or music (Clewett & McClay, 2021;McClay et al, 2023;J. Wang & Lapate, 2023), and shifts in reward structure (Rouhani et al, 2020).…”