Investigating the role of emotion during the search process in free recall

Siddiqui, Aisha P.; Unsworth, Nash

doi:10.3758/s13421-011-0125-9

Cited by 40 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Existing research has provided conflicting evidence as to whether emotion enhances (Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001) or impairs (Kensinger, 2009; Maddock & Frein, 2009; Madan et al, 2012) associative memory. Furthermore, a related study on the organizational effects of emotion on memory (Siddiqui & Unsworth, 2011) showed emotional clustering only when a valence orienting task (pleasantness judgment) was used. Together, these results suggest that a large percentage of emotional items might create subjective and variable strategies, which may interfere with the associative mechanisms that support emotional clustering.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such an “emotional” clustering effect falls naturally out of retrieved context theories (Howard & Kahana, 2002) and is in line with other clustering phenomena, whereby individuals organize their memories by semantic, episodic and spatial associations (Bousfield, 1953; Kahana, 1996; Miller et al, 2013). Previous work has suggested that emotional clustering only occurs when participants are explicitly oriented to the emotionality of items (Siddiqui & Unsworth, 2011); however, the use of many emotional items may have altered participants’ strategies and interfered with a context mechanism. Alternatively, if emotional features are not represented in context, then there should be no consecutive recall of emotional items.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Recall dynamics reveal the retrieval of emotional context

2015

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Memory is often better for emotional rather than neutral stimuli. The benefit for emotional items could be the result of an associative mechanism whereby items are associated to a slowly updating context. Through this process, emotional features are integrated with context during study, and are reactivated during test. The presence of emotion in context would both provide a stronger retrieval cue, enhancing memory of emotional items, as well as lead to emotional clustering, whereby emotionally similar items are recalled consecutively. To measure whether associative mechanisms can explain the enhancement for emotional items, we conducted a free recall study in which most items were emotionally neutral to minimize effects of mood induction and to more closely reflect naturalistic settings. We found that emotional items were significantly more likely to be recalled than neutral items and that participants were more likely to transition between emotional items rather than between emotional and neutral items. Together, these results suggest that contextual encoding and retrieval mechanisms may drive the benefit for emotional items both within and outside the laboratory.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recall dynamics reveal the retrieval of emotional context

2015

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“…Although emotional words (typically selected to vary in both valence and arousal; e.g., Siddiqui & Unsworth, 2011;Talmi & Moscovitch, 2004;Zimmerman & Kelley, 2010; but see Kensinger & Corkin, 2003 are often recalled better than neutral words, such findings are usually observed with discrete-level versions of the mixed-list design, in which a study list contains only two or three types of items, and emotional words have the opportunity to stand out from the neutral words (Talmi, 2013). When the influences of distinctiveness and organization are controlled at study by presenting pure lists of emotional and neutral words (rather than mixed lists), and/or when the neutral comparison words are semantically related, and thus themselves categorically related, the recall benefit for emotional words is eliminated (Dewhurst & Parry, 2000;Talmi & Moscovitch, 2004).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These two factors are the primary factors used by researchers to characterize emotional words and to differentiate lists of emotional words from lists of neutral words. However, with notable exceptions in the work of Kensinger andcolleagues (e.g., Kensinger &Corkin, 2003, 2004), they have frequently been confounded in memory and metamemory research: Emotional words in many studies differ from neutral words in having both more extreme valence (i.e., more negative or more positive) and higher arousal (e.g., Siddiqui & Unsworth, 2011;Talmi & Moscovitch, 2004), including in the metamemory studies by Zimmerman and Kelley (2010) and Tauber and Dunlosky (2012).…”

Section: Dimensions Of Emotionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The influences of valence and arousal on judgments of learning and on recall

2016

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Much is known about how the emotional content of words affects memory for those words, but only recently have researchers begun to investigate whether emotional content influences metamemory-that is, learners' assessments of what is or is not memorable. The present study replicated recent work demonstrating that judgments of learning (JOLs) do indeed reflect the superior memorability of words with emotional content. We further contrasted two hypotheses regarding this effect: a physiological account in which emotional words are judged to be more memorable because of their arousing properties, versus a cognitive account in which emotional words are judged to be more memorable because of their cognitive distinctiveness. Two results supported the latter account. First, both normed arousal (Exp. 1) and normed valence (Exp. 2) independently influenced JOLs, even though only an effect of arousal would be expected under a physiological account. Second, emotional content no longer influenced JOLs in a design (Exp. 3) that reduced the primary distinctiveness of emotional words by using a single list of words in which normed valence and arousal were varied continuously. These results suggest that the metamnemonic benefit of emotional words likely stems from cognitive factors.Keywords Emotion . Metamemory . RecallEmotion is a fundamental aspect of the human experience, and understanding how emotion influences our cognitive processes is an essential component of understanding cognition in general (Mandler, 1975). Emotional effects on memory could include memory for an emotional event, memory for neutral stimuli encountered while in an emotional state, and memory for emotional content encountered in a neutral state. Here, we consider the lattermost of these scenarios: how the emotional content of material encountered in an otherwise neutral state influences subsequent memory and metamemory.We frequently encounter situations in which we learn and remember emotional information, such as when we read a news article recounting a natural disaster or celebration, or when we encounter emotionally evocative literature. Generally, emotional information is remembered better than neutral information (see Kensinger, 2009;Levine & Edelstein, 2009, for reviews); this has been observed with both pictures (e.g., Bradley, Greenwald, Petry, & Lang, 1992) and words (e.g., Kensinger & Corkin, 2003). In the present study, we examined whether and how emotion influences our predictions of future recall, and what these findings imply about the processes by which emotion influences memory and metamemory. Metamemory for emotional informationDespite the vast amount of research examining memory for emotional information, relatively little research has focused on how metamemory (i.e., the monitoring and control of memory) is influenced by emotion. Some general evidence (Tauber & Dunlosky, 2012;Zimmerman & Kelley, 2010) Mem Cogn (2017) 45:121-136 DOI 10.3758/s13421-016-0646-3 below, suggests that learners' predictions of recall can be sensit...

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“…The fact that the backgrounds sometimes were more likely to be accessed when emotional items were cues than when neutral items were cues is particularly surprising based on prior narrowed-encoding theories. However, this enhancement may arise because the emotion-based neural network elicited by the negative and positive item cues may enhance retrieval processes, which may boost the recall rates for the associated backgrounds above the level demonstrated following a neutral item cue (Daselaar, et al, 2008; Siddiqui & Unsworth, 2011). These results reveal boundary conditions for the trade-off and demonstrate that sometimes, emotion can facilitate both object and contextual memory.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neutral details associated with emotional events are encoded: evidence from a cued recall paradigm

Steinmetz

Knight

Kensinger

2015

Cognition and Emotion

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Enhanced emotional memory often comes at the cost of memory for surrounding background information. Narrowed-encoding theories suggest that this is due to narrowed attention for emotional information at encoding, leading to impaired encoding of background information. Recent work has suggested that an encoding-based theory may be insufficient. Here, we examined whether cued recall – instead of previously used recognition memory tasks - would reveal evidence that non-emotional information associated with emotional information was effectively encoded. Participants encoded positive, negative, or neutral objects on neutral backgrounds. At retrieval, they were given either the item or the background as a memory cue and were asked to recall the associated scene element. Counter to narrowed-encoding theories, emotional items were more likely than neutral items to trigger recall of the associated background. This finding suggests that there is a memory trace of this contextual information and that emotional cues may facilitate retrieval of this information.

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Investigating the role of emotion during the search process in free recall

Cited by 40 publications

References 37 publications

Recall dynamics reveal the retrieval of emotional context

Recall dynamics reveal the retrieval of emotional context

The influences of valence and arousal on judgments of learning and on recall

Neutral details associated with emotional events are encoded: evidence from a cued recall paradigm

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