The Impact of Anxiety on Memory for Details in Spider Phobics

Abstract

SUMMARYAccording to the attentional narrowing account of emotional memory, physiological arousal results in attention being directed towards central rather than peripheral characteristics of the situation. Consequently, memory for central details would be relatively good, whereas memory for peripheral information would be impaired. The present experiment sought to test this attentional narrowing hypothesis under highly stressful conditions. Spider phobics and low-fear controls were confronted with a large live spider, eliciting high levels of emotion in the phobic group. Afterwards, subjects' memory for the experimental situation was tested. On a cued recall test, phobics displayed a poor memory for peripheral detail information relative to control subjects. There were no differences between phobics and controls with respect to central detail information. Thus, the present data provide partial support for the attentional narrowing account of emotional memory. The question of how emotional events are remembered has intrigued many researchers. Christianson (1992) noted that the type of information that is involved in memory testing should be taken into account in emotion and memory research. Following Easterbrook's (1959) cue-utilization hypothesis, Christianson (1992 argued that physiological arousal experienced during a traumatic event causes attentional narrowing. This, in turn, would result in hyperattention for information reflecting the gist of the traumatic event (central details) and hypoattention for irrelevant (peripheral) information. Due to such differential encoding, memory for central details of the emotional situation would be relatively good, whereas memory for peripheral details would be relatively poor.There is empirical evidence to support Christianson's attentional narrowing hypothesis. Field studies examining the memory of witnesses for robberies (Christianson and HuÈ binette, 1993), or that of college students for idiosyncratic CCC 0888±4080/97/030223±09$17.50

Bringing Emotions Into Social Exchange Theory

“…For example, Wessel & Merckelbach (1997) found that spider phobics exposed to a large live spider (i.e., the high-fear group) had less recall for minor details than did non-spider phobics (i.e., the low-fear group). However, at least one recent experiment questions these ideas.…”

Memory for thematically arousing events

“…Many studies have indicated that emotionality has two effects on memory: First, emotion seems to improve memory for the gist of an event and, also, for details closely associated with this gist (e.g., the exact appearance of characters central to the plot or the details of objects that were perceptually prominent within the scene). Second, emotion seems to undermine memory for more peripheral aspects of the event, including any details not closely tied to the event's main actors or objects and, also, details spatially in the background (see, e.g., Burke, Heuer, & Reisberg, 1992;Christianson & Loftus, 1987, 1991Wessel & Merckelbach, 1997; see Reisberg & Heuer, 2004, for a review).…”

“…In another study, participants were presented with a sequence of graphic pictures showing a woman whose throat had been cut (Safer, Christianson, Autry, & Österu-lund, 1998). In yet another study, spider phobics were brought into the laboratory and shown live spiders (Wessel & Merckelbach, 1997), and so on.…”

Negative affective state mimics effects of perceptual load on spatial perception.

“…However, enhanced levels of NA have been shown to influence memory for (Wessel & Merckelbach, 1997), or selective attention to (Chajut & Algom, 2003;Fenske & Eastwood, 2003;Finucane & Powers, 2010) peripheral stimuli, therefore suggesting that the spillover of attention to irrelevant stimuli might not be invariable, but instead flexibly modulated by situational factors (e.g., affective state). In line with this view, Schmitz and colleagues (Schmitz, De Rosa, & Anderson, 2009) showed that the size of the attentional focus could be modulated depending on the current affective state of the participant.…”