EMOTION, AROUSAL AND MEMORY

• Why emotion and memory?– motivational foundations of cognition– Neurologic links of memory and

emotion– Claims about emotion and memory

• Flashbulb memories• Intrusion of memories for traumatic

events• Repression of memories for traumatic

events?

• Cortical regions involved in emotional cognition– Limbic system

• Amygdala and the Papez Circuit– Medial frontal cortex

• Phineas Gage syndrome– fMRI activation

• recent work at UF

Pleasant

unpleasant

Calm Aroused

A TWO-FACTOR APPROACH TO EMOTION

• Emotion as motivational “action dispositions” (Lang et al.)– Approach and avoidance

= valence (pleasant / unpleasant)– Intensity

= arousal (calm / aroused)

• Norming the “emotional space” of stimuli

butter pretty heroperson history cancer

• How emotion could affect memory– Attentional focus and intensity– Encoding depth and elaboration– Degree of rehearsal and review– Rate or extent of “consolidation”– Affect as retrieval cue– Inhibitory effect of stress?

• Memory for emotional life events– Emotional public events– Traumatic personal experiences– Are unpleasant events ever less

memorable?• Potential for selective rehearsal• The Pollyanna effect• Amnesia for highly traumatic events:

Fugues and dissociative amnesia

Main Findings of Research on Emotion and Memory

• Arousal, more than valence, matters– For lab and life, pleasant and

unpleasant events remembered better than neutral events

– Differences for memory of pleasant & unpleasant events very domain-specific

• Emotional arousal can act directly as well as indirectly

AMYG HIPPOCAMPUS

Release of stressHormones(cortisol, adrenaline)

Systemicarousal

EMOTION AND MEMORYIN THE LAB

• Ebbinghaus (1885): emotional materials “more memorable”

• Levinger & Clark (1961)– 30 neutral, 30 unpleasant words– Ss generate associates to each– Immediate recall of associates, given

words, slower & less accurate for unpleasant words

– So: repression of unpleasant events?

• Bradley & Morris (1976)– Add pleasant words, delayed recall– Immediate recall worse for emotional

words– Delayed recall better for emotional

words– So, in LTM at least, a very typical

“arousal” effect, with emotional words better remembered

ERP’S AND EMOTIONAL WORDS

• ERPs to emotional words– emotional words show an enhanced

positivity c. 300-600 msec post-onset (e.g., Fischler et al.)

– Effect is lost when looking only at words subsequently not recalled

C Z

C Z

• The “attentional narrowing” hypothesis (Easterbook 1959: Cue Utilization)– Some evidence that stress narrows the

“scope” of the spotlight– The “weapon focus” hypothesis

(Christianson, 1990)

Heuer & Reisberg (1990): emotion and “detail memory”

arousing slide show (visit surgeon father, gory pics) neutral slide show (visit auto mechanic father)

unexpected recall two weeks later:

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Central Peripheral

Centrality to story

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Arousing

Neutral

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Plot Character

Type of intrusion error

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The “Papez circuit”

The “Limbic” System