Emotionally negative pictures enhance gist memory.

Bookbinder, Sarah; Brainerd, Charles J.

doi:10.1037/emo0000171

Cited by 48 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Emotional arousal increases vividness of recollection; specifically, negative emotional arousal is associated with greater detail in recognition memory, and positive emotional arousal at encoding results in greater recollective memory (Gomes et al 2013). Yet when arousal is controlled, negatively valenced stimuli increases gist memory (Bookbinder & Brainerd 2017)episodic memory, therefore, is altered later on as a function of an individual's internal state and interpretation of stimuli at the moment of encoding. Within negatively valenced responses, disgust appears to have a stronger grip on attention and memory than anxiety (Chapman et al 2013).…”

Section: Jean-louis Dessallesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory

Mahr¹,

Csibra²

2017

Behav Brain Sci

233

152

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Short Abstract-We propose a novel account of episodic memory function based on a conceptual and empirical analysis of its role in belief formation. We provide a critique of the view that episodic memory serves future-directed imagination, and argue that the central features of this capacity can instead be explained by the role it plays in human communication. On this view, episodic memory allows us to communicatively support our interpretations of the past by gauging when we can assert epistemic authority. This capacity is ineliminable in justification of, and negotiations about, social commitments established by past interactions.Long Abstract-Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential, 'autonoetic' character. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms, and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken towards an event simulation. On this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentational format and should not be equated with beliefs about the past. Instead, empirical findings suggest that the contents of human episodic memory are often constructed in the service of the explicit justification of such beliefs. Existing accounts of episodic memory function that have focused on explaining its constructive character through its role in 'future-oriented mental time travel' neither do justice to its capacity to ground veridical beliefs about the past nor to its representational format. We provide an account of the metarepresentational structure of episodic memory in terms of its role in communicative interaction. The generative nature of recollection allows us to represent and communicate the reasons for why we hold certain beliefs about the past. In this process, autonoesis corresponds to the capacity to determine when and how to assert epistemic authority in making claims about the past. A domain where such claims are indispensable are human social engagements. Such engagements commonly require the justification of entitlements and obligations, which is often possible only by explicit reference to specific past events.

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Section: Jean-louis Dessallesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why do we remember? The communicative function of episodic memory

Mahr¹,

Csibra²

2017

Behav Brain Sci

233

152

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“…The second sub-corpus is derived from false memory experiments with tasks other than the DRM illusion. The study materials consisted of such things as sentences (Singer & Spear, 2015), picture lists (Bookbinder & Brainerd, 2017), lists of unrelated words (Odegard & Lampinen, 2005), and short narratives (Brainerd, Reyna, & Estrada, 2006). As in DRM experiments, subjects responded to O, NS, and ND items on memory tests, but false memory levels are generally lower than in the DRM experiments.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Complementarity in false memory illusions.

Brainerd

Reyna

2018

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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For some years, the DRM illusion has been the most widely studied form of false memory. The consensus theoretical interpretation is that the illusion is a reality reversal, in which certain new words (critical distractors) are remembered as though they are old list words rather than as what they are-new words that are similar to old ones. This reality-reversal interpretation is supported by compelling lines of evidence, but prior experiments are limited by the fact that their memory tests only asked whether test items were old. We removed that limitation by also asking whether test items were new-similar. This more comprehensive methodology revealed that list words and critical distractors are remembered quite differently. Memory for list words is compensatory: They are remembered as old at high rates and remembered as new-similar at very low rates. In contrast, memory for critical distractors is complementary: They are remembered as both old and new-similar at high rates, which means that the DRM procedure induces a complementarity illusion rather than a reality reversal. The conjoint recognition model explains complementarity as a function of three retrieval processes (semantic familiarity, target recollection, and context recollection), and it predicts that complementarity can be driven up or down by varying the mix of those processes. Our experiments generated data on that prediction and introduced a convenient statistic, the complementarity ratio, which measures (a) the level of complementarity in memory performance and (b) whether its direction is reality-consistent or reality-reversed. (PsycINFO Database Record

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“…Negative emotions induce a more concrete adaptive processing state, leading individuals to process information with greater attention and for longer periods (Matovic, Kock, & Forgas, 2014). These effects relate to evidence that negative events are more accessible to memory, enhancing the recollection of details and central facts (Hostler, Wood, & Armitage, 2018;Kensinger & Schacter, 2008) that are essential and intrinsic to the events (Bookbinder & Brainerd, 2017;Kensinger, 2009) because they include more distinct memories (Brewin & Langley, 2019).…”

Section: Effects Of the Valence Of Memories On Evaluations And Judgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%