Post-encoding positive emotion impairs associative memory for English vocabulary.

Chengchen Li,Lin Fan,Bo Wang

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0228614

Abstract

There is evidence that emotion induced during encoding impairs associative memory (e.g., Bisby, Horner, Bush, & Burgess, 2018), yet the effect of post-encoding emotion (particularly positive emotion) on associative memory remains largely unclear. Two experiments were conducted to examine the effect of post-encoding positive emotion on associative memory for English vocabulary. In Experiment 1, high school students memorized Chinese definitions of a list of English words, immediately recalled the Chinese definitions, watched a neutral or comic video, and took a delayed memory test 25 minutes after encoding. The result showed a significant impairing effect of post-encoding positive emotion on memory for Chinese definitions. In Experiment 2, primary school students encoded English words with their associative pictures, took an immediate test where, on each trial, they were asked to choose the correct English word that matches a picture. Following the test, they watched a neutral or comic video, and took a memory test 10 minutes after encoding. Consistent with Experiment 1, Experiment 2 showed an impairing effect of positive emotion. Taken together, these findings support the hypothesis that post-encoding positive emotion can impair associative memory, providing important implications for acquisition of vocabulary of English as a foreign language.

Highlights

Episodic memory consists of two components: item memory and associative memory, with the former referring to the form of memory that provides the basis for remembering that a stimulus or event has been encountered, and the latter referring to the form of memory that represents relationships among items [1]
The purpose of the current study was to investigate the effect of post-encoding positive emotion on associative memory
The results from Experiment 1 showed that post-encoding positive emotion impaired associative memory for high school students

Summary

Introduction

Episodic memory consists of two components: item memory and associative memory, with the former referring to the form of memory that provides the basis for remembering that a stimulus or event has been encountered, and the latter referring to the form of memory that represents relationships among items [1]. Item memory can be tested by free recall or recognition [e.g., 2,3]. Associative memory can be tested by recalling a target item in a paired associate. During encoding participants are usually presented with a series of wordpairs (e.g., bulb-pencil). For memory test they can be presented with the first word of previously learned word pairs (e.g., bulb) and asked to recall the word that completes the pair [e.g., 4]. Prior studies have shown that emotion can enhance item memory, yet the effect of emotion on associative memory remains poorly understood.

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Conclusion