Reduced associative memory for negative information: impact of confidence and interactive imagery during study

Jeremy B Caplan,Tobias Sommer,Christopher R Madan,Esther Fujiwara

doi:10.1080/02699931.2019.1602028

Jeremy B Caplan, Tobias Sommer + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1602028

Copy DOI

Abstract

ABSTRACTAlthough item-memory for emotional information is enhanced, memory for associations between items is often impaired for negative, emotionally arousing compared to neutral information. We tested two possible mechanisms underlying this impairment, using picture pairs: 1) higher confidence in one’s own ability to memorise negative information may cause participants to under-study negative pairs; 2) better interactive imagery for neutral pairs could facilitate associative memory for neutral pairs more than for negative pairs. Tested with associative recognition, we replicated the impairment of associative memory for negative pairs. We also replicated the result that confidence in future memory (judgments of learning) was higher for negative than neutral pairs. Inflated confidence could not explain the impairment of associative recognition memory: Judgements of learning were positively correlated with associative memory success for both negative and neutral pairs. However, neutral pairs were rated higher in their conduciveness to interactive imagery than negative pairs, and this difference in interactive imagery showed a robust relationship to the associative memory difference. Thus, associative memory reductions for negative information are not due to differences in encoding effort. Instead, interactive imagery may be less effective for encoding of negative than neutral pairs.

Highlights

Emotional arousal enhances item-memory and the underlying cognitive and neural processes have been well characterized (Talmi, 2013)
Results of Zimmerman and Kelley (2010) were suggestive of another, meta-cognitive mechanism underlying the associative memory reduction. Their participants encoded emotional or neutral word pairs and made judgements of learning (JOL), estimating, for each pair, how likely they would remember it in an association-memory test
Simple effects showed that the associative memory reduction for negative pairs was more pronounced in List 1 than in List 2, t(80)=2.26, p=.027, d=0.25 (MList1=-0.08±0.16; MList2=-0.03±0.13)

Summary

Introduction

Emotional arousal enhances item-memory and the underlying cognitive and neural processes have been well characterized (Talmi, 2013). ArousalBiased Competition (ABC) Theory (Mather & Sutherland, 2011) suggests that emotional arousal will generally enhance memory for prioritized parts of an association at the expense of non-prioritized parts, irrespective if prioritization is driven by the stimulus layout or task demands. Using a verbal paired-associates task in which memorizing associations was explicitly instructed, but the stimulus layout was between-item, Madan, Caplan, Lau, and Fujiwara (2012) demonstrated that item-memory for arousing words was enhanced (relative to neutral words), but their associative binding was impaired. These verbal memory findings extend to pictures (Bisby & Burgess, 2014)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion