Testing emotional memories: does negative emotional significance influence the benefit received from testing?

Abstract

A large body of research shows that emotionally significant stimuli are better stored in memory. One question that has received much less attention is how emotional memories are influenced by factors that influence memories after the initial encoding of stimuli. Intriguingly, several recent studies suggest that post-encoding factors do not differ in their effects on emotional and neutral memories. However, to date, only detrimental factors have been addressed. In the present study, we examined whether emotionally negative memories are differentially influenced by a well-known beneficial factor: the testing of memories. We employed a standard cued recall testing-effect paradigm where participants studied cue-target pairs for negative and neutral target pictures. In a subsequent post-encoding phase, one third of the cue-target pairs were tested and one third restudied; the remaining third served as control pairs. After one week, memory for all cue-target pairs was tested. While replicating both the testing effect and the emotional enhancement effect, no differences between negative and neutral memories in the benefits received from testing and restudying were observed. Thus, it seems to be true that post-encoding factors do not influence emotional memories in any other way than neutral memories, even when they are beneficial.

Testing Memories of Personally Experienced Events: The Testing Effect Seems Not to Persist in Autobiographical Memory

“…Numerous studies have shown that retrieving contents from memory in a test considerably improves long-term memory for those contents, even when compared to a condition where the contents are represented for restudying (i.e., the “testing effect,” Carrier and Pashler, 1992 ; for recent meta-analyses see Rowland, 2014 ; Adesope et al, 2017 ). The beneficial effect of retrieval practice has been demonstrated for a wide range of test formats (e.g., cued recall, free recall, recognition memory), for a large variety of study materials (e.g., wordlists, vocabulary, prose texts), and even extends to procedural skills ( Kromann et al, 2009 ) and emotional memories( Emmerdinger et al, 2017 ). However, previous research in the field has neglected one particularly important memory system: autobiographical memory.…”