Emotional Word Lists Research Articles

The semantics of emotion in false memory.

The emotional valence of target information has been a centerpiece of recent false memory research, but in most experiments, it has been confounded with emotional arousal. We sought to clarify the results of such research by identifying a shared mathematical relation between valence and arousal ratings in commonly administered normed materials. That relation was then used to (a) decide whether arousal as well as valence influences false memory when they are confounded and to (b) determine whether semantic properties that are known to affect false memory covary with valence and arousal ratings. In Study 1, we identified a quadratic relation between valence and arousal ratings of words and pictures that has 2 key properties: Arousal increases more rapidly as function of negative valence than positive valence, and hence, a given level of negative valence is more arousing than the same level of positive valence. This quadratic function predicts that if arousal as well as valence affects false memory when they are confounded, false memory data must have certain fine-grained properties. In Study 2, those properties were absent from norming data for the Cornell-Cortland Emotional Word Lists, indicating that valence but not arousal affects false memory in those norms. In Study 3, we tested fuzzy-trace theory's explanation of that pattern: that valence ratings are positively related to semantic properties that are known to increase false memory, but arousal ratings are not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

If You're Happy and You Know It: Positive Moods Reduce Age-Related Differences in False Memory.

When tested in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm, children typically exhibit fewer false memories than do adolescents or adults. Here, participants' moods and the valence of word lists were manipulated to explore the mechanism responsible for this developmental reversal in memory performance. Children (7- to 8-year-olds), adolescents (11- to 12-year-olds), and young adults (18- to 22-year-olds; N=270) were assigned to one of three induced mood conditions and were presented with emotional word lists. In negative moods, adolescents and adults falsely recalled more negative information than did children, showing the typical developmental reversal effect. This effect, however, was eliminated when participants were in positive moods. The findings provide support for associative-activation theory and have important implications for our understanding of the development of emotional false memories.

Food for happy thought: Glucose protects age-related positivity effects under cognitive load.

Older adults show a preference for positive information, which disappears under high task demands. We examined whether glucose can help older adults preserve their positivity effect (PE) under high cognitive load. One hundred twenty-two adults (40 young and 42 older in Experiment 1; 40 older in Experiment 2) consumed a glucose (25 g) or a taste-matched placebo drink and completed an immediate recall task of emotional word-lists presented under high- and low-load conditions. Older adults showed PEs for low-load lists. Whereas PEs disappeared for older-placebo participants for high-load lists, older-glucose participants retained their positive preference. Providing the brain with extra energy resources can help older adults achieve PEs even under demanding conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record

Discrete emotion-congruent false memories in the DRM paradigm.

Research has shown that false-memory production is enhanced for material that is emotionally congruent with the mood of the participant at the time of encoding. So far this research has only been conducted to examine the influence of generic negative affective mood states and generic negative stimuli on false-memory production. In addition, much of the research is limited as it focuses on valence and arousal dimensions, and fails to take into account the more comprehensive nature of emotions. The current study demonstrates that this effect goes beyond general negative or positive moods and acts at a more discrete emotional level. Participants underwent a standard emotion-induction procedure before listening to negative emotional or neutral associative word lists. The emotions induced, negative word lists, and associated nonpresented critical lures, were related to either fear or anger, 2 negative valence emotions that are also both high in arousal. Results showed that when valence and arousal are controlled for, false memories are more likely to be produced for discrete emotionally congruent compared with incongruent materials. These results support spreading activation theories of false remembering and add to our understanding of the adaptive nature of false-memory production. (PsycINFO Database Record

The effect of mood on false memory for emotional DRM word lists

ABSTRACTIn the present study, we investigated the effect of participants’ mood on true and false memories of emotional word lists in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm. In Experiment 1, we constructed DRM word lists in which all the studied words and corresponding critical lures reflected a specified emotional valence. In Experiment 2, we used these lists to assess mood-congruent true and false memory. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three induced-mood conditions (positive, negative, or neutral) and were presented with word lists comprised of positive, negative, or neutral words. For both true and false memory, there was a mood-congruent effect in the negative mood condition; this effect was due to a decrease in true and false recognition of the positive and neutral words. These findings are consistent with both spreading-activation and fuzzy-trace theories of DRM performance and have practical implications for our understanding of the effect of mood on memory.

Maltreated and non-maltreated children’s true and false memories of neutral and emotional word lists in the Deese/Roediger–McDermott task

Maltreated (n=26) and non-maltreated (n=31) 7- to 12-year-old children were tested on the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) false memory task using emotional and neutral word lists. True recall was significantly better for non-maltreated than maltreated children regardless of list valence. The proportion of false recall for neutral lists was comparable regardless of maltreatment status. However, maltreated children showed a significantly higher false recall rate for the emotional lists than non-maltreated children. Together, these results provide new evidence that maltreated children could be more prone to false memory illusions for negatively valenced information than their non-maltreated counterparts.

On the roles of distinctiveness and semantic expectancies in episodic encoding of emotional words.

We examined the factors that contribute to enhanced recall for emotionally arousing words by analyzing behavioral performance, the P300 as an index of distinctiveness, and the N400 as an index of semantic expectancy violation in a modified Von Restorff paradigm. While their EEG was recorded, participants studied three list types (1) neutral words including one emotionally arousing isolate (either positive or negative), (2) arousing, negative words including one neutral isolate, or (3) arousing, positive words including one neutral isolate. Immediately after each list, free recall was tested. Negative, but not positive, words exhibited enhanced recall when presented as isolates in lists of neutral words and elicited a larger P300 for subsequently recalled than not-recalled words. This suggests that arousing, negative words stand out and that their distinctiveness contributes to their superior recall. Positive valence had an enhancing effect on recall only when the list contained mostly other positive words. Neutral isolates placed in either positive or negative lists elicited an N400, suggesting that semantic expectations developed in emotional word lists regardless of valence. However, semantic relatedness appeared to more strongly contribute to recall for positive than negative words. Our results suggest that distinctiveness and semantic relatedness contribute to episodic encoding of arousing words, but the impact of each factor depends on both a word's valence and its context.

Investigating the mechanisms fuelling reduced false recall of emotional material

We investigated false memory for emotional word lists using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm. Participants viewed negative, positive, and neutral lists of semantic associates matched on backward associate strength (BAS) and word frequency and recalled as many words as they could remember after each list was presented. Results from two experiments indicated that while participants did create false memories for emotional word lists, neutral lists resulted in the highest false and true recall rates. Experiment 2 used an inclusion task that required participants to recall any words that came to mind and indicate whether the words had actually been presented. The results suggest that emotional words decrease false memories, in part, by encouraging item-specific processing, which consequently impairs the acquisition of relational information and/or the spread of activation to the critical lure.

False Recognition of Emotional Word Lists in Aging and Alzheimer Disease

To examine 3 different aspects of the emotional memory effect in aging and Alzheimer disease (AD): item-specific recollection, gist memory, and recognition response bias. Younger adults, older adults, and patients with AD performed a false recognition memory test in which participants were tested on "lure" items that were not seen at study, but were semantically related to the study items. Participants were tested on 5 emotional and 5 non-emotional lists. In addition to finding an increase in true recognition for emotional versus non-emotional items in healthy younger and older adults but not in patients with AD, and confirming that emotional items led younger adults to shift their response bias to a more liberal one, 3 novel findings were observed. First, the emotional effect on response bias was also observed in healthy older adults. Second, the opposite emotional effect on response bias was observed in patients with AD. Third, emotional items did not lead to an improvement in item-specific recollection or gist memory. Although healthy older adults show the normal amygdala-modulated criterion shift for emotional items-influencing their subjective feeling that information has been previously encountered, the amygdala pathology present in early AD may disrupt this influence.

The emotional counting Stroop: a task for assessing emotional interference during brain imaging

The emotional counting Stroop (ecStroop) is an emotional variant of the counting Stroop. Both of these tasks require a motor response instead of a spoken response for the purpose of minimizing head movement during functional MRI (fMRI). During this task, subjects report, by button press, the number of words (1-4) that appear on a screen, regardless of word meaning. Neutral word-control trials contain common words (e.g., 'cabinet' written three times), while interference trials contain emotional words (e.g., 'murder' written three times). The degree to which this task represents a true 'Stroop' interference task, in the sense that emotional words will increase motor-response times compared with neutral words, depends upon the subjects of the study and the words that are presented. Much research on the emotional Stroop task demonstrates that interference effects are observed in psychopathological groups in response to words that are specific to their disorder, and in normal subjects when the words are related to current concerns endorsed by them. The ecStroop task described here will produce reaction time-interference effects that are comparable to the traditional color-naming emotional Stroop. This protocol can be completed in approximately 20 min per subject. The protocol described here employs neutral words and emotional words that include general-negative words, as well as words specific to combat-related trauma. However, this protocol is amenable to any emotional word lists.

Blood glucose changes and memory: Effects of manipulating emotionality and mental effort

Increasing the emotionality of target material often facilitates memory performance which may be linked to the liberation of glucose. Conversely, increasing mental effort leads to reduced performance and measurable falls in blood glucose. A 2 × 2, parallel groups experiment examined these two phenomena directly by assessing blood glucose levels and memory for neutral and emotional word lists, both with and without a secondary task. Co-performing the secondary task significantly reduced blood glucose in the neutral word condition only and resulted in a global reduction of memory performance in both neutral and emotional word conditions. Processing emotional material resulted in significantly raised blood glucose levels, however, there was no advantage for memory of emotional words. A follow-up study confirmed that the emotionality manipulation was effective. We conclude that there exists a clear relationship between reduced blood glucose and impaired memory performance during periods of mental effort. However, the relationship between physiological and cognitive processes associated with processing emotional material are more complex.