The role of attention in immediate emotional false memory enhancement.

Lauren M Knott,Datin Shah,Enrico Toffalini,Louise Humphreys,Mark L Howe

doi:10.1037/emo0000407

Abstract

Two experiments examined the effect of reduced attentional resources on false memory production for emotionally valenced stimuli using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Prior research has demonstrated that emotional information is often better remembered than neutral information and that enhanced memory for emotional information is dependent on either automatic or controlled neural processing (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004). Behavioral studies designed to reduce attention resources at encoding have supported neuroimaging findings that indicate high arousal negative stimuli rely more on automatic processing but positive high arousal stimuli rely more on controlled processing. No study has yet examined the attentional resources required to produce emotionally valenced false memories. In Experiment 1, negative, positive, and neutral DRM lists were studied under full or divided attention (DA) conditions, and in Experiment 2, negative and neutral DRM lists were studied under fast (20 ms) or slow (2,000 ms) presentation conditions. Under DA and speeded presentation conditions, higher false memory recognition rates were found for negative compared with positive (Experiment 1) and neutral (Experiments 1 and 2) critical lures. This is the first demonstration of which we are aware that suggests negative false memories are associated with automatic neural processing, whereas positive and nonvalenced neutral false memories are associated with more controlled processing.

Highlights

Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience
Performance on the random number generation task was compared across emotion conditions to examine any differences in attention devoted to the secondary task
For N generated, there was no significant difference between positive (M ϭ 105.79, 95% CI [95.47, 116.12]), neutral (M ϭ 104.72, 95% CI [91.88, 117.56]), and negative (M ϭ 102.93, 95% CI [92.35, 113.52]), F(2, 88) ϭ 0.07, p ϭ .94, ␩p2 ϭ .004. For this secondary task, there appeared to be no differences in the attentional resources devoted to the completion of the task as a function of list type

Summary

Introduction

Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Valenced stimuli and emotional events tend to be better remembered than comparable neutral ones (e.g., Bradley, Greenwald, Petry, & Lang, 1992; Cahill & McGaugh, 1995; LaBar & Phelps, 1998; Talmi, Luk, McGarry, & Moscovitch, 2007) This enhanced memory for emotional stimuli appears to be quite a robust and general effect, occurring in the laboratory when tested using both recognition and recall (free and cued) and across a range of stimulus types including pictures, words, and videos (Bradley et al, 1992; Doerksen & Shimamura, 2001; MacKay et al, 2004; Richardson, Strange, & Dolan, 2004; Talmi et al, 2007).

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