Characteristics analysis of emotional memory of college students

Abstract

Objective To explore the gender and cultural differences in emotional memory of college students and whether they have memory preferences for emotional pictures with different valence. Methods Using the learning-recognition paradigm, fifty-four Tibetan and Han students were asked to recognize the emotional face images of different valence. The reaction time and accuracy of the subjects were recorded and analyzed. Results (1)The reaction times of the Tibetan and Han subjects were (1 808.28±528.45)ms and (1 508.27±455.37)ms, the main effect of national type was significant (F(1, 50)=5.826, P<0.05). The main effect of emotional picture valence was significant (F(2, 100)=6.997, P<0.05), the reaction time of negative pictures((1 568.90±534.45)ms) was significantly shorter than that of the positive picture ((1 684.08±476.24)ms) and neural pictures((1 738.51±528.73)ms). (2) On the accuracy rate, the main effect of emotional picture valence was significant (F(2, 49)=29.56, P<0.05). The accuracy of negative images ((78.83±8.55)%) was significantly higher than that of the positive ((73.41±9.66)%) and neutral picture ((67.96±9.64)%). (3)For Tibetan subjects, the accuracy of positive picture ((77.46±8.48)%) was significantly higher than that of positive ((70.89±8.83)%) and neutral pictures ((67.32±8.70)%), the main effect of emotional picture valence was significant (F(2, 52)=14.891, P<0.05). (4) For Han subjects, , the response time of negative images ((1 359.89±365.58)ms) was significantly shorter than that of positive ((1 549.93±434.60)ms) and neutral pictures ((1 615.01±528.77)ms), the main effect of emotional picture valence was significant (F(2, 48)=9.758, P<0.05). The accuracy of negative images ((80.31±8.53)%) was significantly higher than that of neutral ((68.65±10.70)%) and positive images ((76.12±9.94)%), and the main effect of emotional picture valence was significant (F(2, 48)=15.359, P<0.05). Conclusion National culture and emotional valence affect the emotional memory of the Tibetan and Han students. Both Tibetan and Han students have obvious negative on the recognition of emotional images, but they have different characteristics. Key words: Emotional memory; Tibetan college students; Han nationality college students; Negative bias