Affect and Memory in Real Life

Abstract

Negative affect caused by depression is known to produce cognitive failures during everyday activities. However, traditional neurobehavioral laboratory paradigms that assess affect-memory interactions are critical with respect to their ecological validity. To investigate the effects of negative affect on memory processes in everyday life, we applied a new interactive measurement method in order to detect heart rate increases without accompanying physical activity and to initiate stimulus presentations depending on the specific emotional state in healthy participants. Psychophysiological instability and the intensity of psychophysiological arousal at the time of encoding proved to be important predictors of memory performance in negatively valenced situations. We suggest that multimodal ambulatory methods provide an interesting new opportunity for assessing interactions of emotion and cognition in real life.