Emotional arousal does not enhance association-memory

Journal of Memory and Language

Volumn 66, Issue 4, 2012, Pages 695-716

  Madan, Christopher R ^a   Caplan, Jeremy B ^a   Lau, Christine S M ^a   Fujiwara, Esther ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA   (Canada)

Author keywords

Arousal; Association memory; Cued recall; Emotion; Paired associate learning; Taboo

Indexed keywords

EID: 84862261914     PISSN: 0749596X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jml.2012.04.001     Document Type: Article

References (60)

1. Anderson A.K. Affective influences on the attentional dynamics supporting awareness. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 2005, 134:258-281.
2. Anderson A.K., Wais P.E., Gabrieli J.D.E. Emotion enhances remembrance of neutral events past. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2006, 103:1599-1604.
3. Berntsen D., Rubin D. Cultural life scripts structure recall from autobiographical memory. Memory & Cognition 2004, 32:427-442.
4. Bertels J., Kolinsky R., Morais J. Norms of emotional valence, arousal, threat value and shock value for 80 spoken french words: Comparison between neutral and emotional tones of voice. Psychologica Belgica 2009, 49:19-40.
5. Bertels J., Kolinsky R., Morais J. Emotional valence of spoken words influences the spatial orienting of attention. Acta Psychologica 2010, 134:264-278.
6. Bornstein B.H., Liebel L.M., Scarberry N.C. Repeated testing in eyewitness memory: A means to improve recall of a negative emotional event. Applied Cognitive Psychology 1998, 12:119-131.
7. Bradley M.M., Greenwald M.K., Petry M.C., Lang P.J. Remembering pictures: Pleasure and arousal in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 1992, 18:379-390.
8. Bradley M.M., Lang P.J. Measuring emotion: The self-assessment manikin and the semantic differential. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 1994, 25:49-59.
9. Bradley, M.M., & Lang, P.J. 1999. Affective norms for English words (ANEW): Stimuli, instruction manual and affective ratings. Technical report No. C-1. Gainesville, FL, The Center for Research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida.
10. Brown R., Kulik J. Flashbulb memories. Cognition 1977, 5:73-99.
11. Buchanan T.W., Etzel J.A., Adolphs R., Tranel D. The influence of autonomic arousal and semantic relatedness on memory for emotional words. International Journal of Psychophysiology 2006, 61:26-33.
12. Buchler N.G., Light L.L., Reder L.M. Memory for items and associations: Distinct representations and processes in associative recognition. Journal of Memory and Language 2008, 59:183-199.
13. Burnham K.E., Anderson D.R. Model selection and multimodel inteference 2002, Springer-Verlag, New York. 2nd ed.
14. Burnham K.E., Anderson D.R. Multimodel inference: Understanding AIC and BIC in model selection. Sociological Methods & Research 2004, 33:261-304.
15. Christianson S.A. Emotional-stress and eyewitness memory - A critical-review. Psychological Bulletin 1992, 112:284-309.
16. Criss A.H., Aue W.R., Smith L. The effects of word frequency and context variability in cued recall. Journal of Memory and Language 2011, 64:119-132.
17. Criss A.H., Shiffrin R.M. List discrimination in associative recognition and implications for representation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 2005, 31:1199-1212.
18. Davidson P.S.R., McFarland C.P., Glisky E.L. Effects of emotion on item and source memory in young and older adults. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 2006, 6:306-322.
19. Doerksen S., Shimamura A.P. Source memory enhancement for emotional words. Emotion 2001, 5-11.
20. Ellis N.R., Detterman D.K., Runcie D., McCarver R.B., Craig E.M. Amnesic effects in short-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology 1971, 89:357-361.
21. Geller A.S., Schleifer I.K., Sederberg P.B., Jacobs J., Kahana M.J. PyEPL: A cross-platform experiment-programming library. Behavior Research Methods 2007, 39:950-958.
22. Guillet R., Arndt J. Taboo words: The effect of emotion on memory for peripheral information. Memory & Cognition 2009, 37:866-879.
23. Hadley C.B., MacKay D.G. Does emotion help or hinder immediate memory? Arousal versus priority-binding mechanisms. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 2006, 32:79-88.
24. Hare R.D. Orienting and defensive responses to visual stimuli. Psychophysiology 1973, 10:453-464.
25. Howard M.W., Kahana M.J. When does semantic similarity help episodic retrieval?. Journal of Memory and Language 2002, 46:85-98.
26. Hurlemann R., Hawellek B., Matusch A., Kolsch H., Wollersen H., Madea B., et al. Noradrenergic modulation of emotion-induced forgetting and remembering. Journal of Neuroscience 2005, 25:6343-6349.
27. Janschewitz K. Taboo, emotionally valenced, and emotionally neutral word norms. Behaviour Research Methods 2008, 40:1065-1074.
28. Jay T. Cursing in America 1992, John Benjamins, Philadelphia.
29. Jay T., Caldwell-Harris C., King K. Recalling taboo and nontaboo words. American Journal of Psychology 2008, 12. 183-103.
30. Jay T., Janschewitz K. The pragmatics of swearing. Journal of Politeness Research 2008, 4:267-288.
31. Johnson M.K., Raye C.L., Mitchell K.J., Greene E.J., Cunningham W.A., Sanislow C.A. Using fMRI to investigate a component process of reflection: Prefrontal correlates of refreshing a just-activated representation. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 2005, 5:339-361.
32. Kahana M.J. Associative symmetry and memory theory. Memory & Cognition 2002, 30:823-840.
33. Kelley R., Wixted J.T. On the nature of associative information in recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 2001, 27:701-722.
34. Kensinger E.A., Corkin S. Memory enhancement for emotional words: Are emotional words more vividly remembered than neutral words?. Memory & Cognition 2003, 31:1169-1180.
35. Landauer T.K., Dumais S.T. A solution to Plato's problem: The latent semantic analysis theory of acquisition, induction, and representation of knowledge. Psychological Review 1997, 104:211-240.
36. Loftus G.R., Masson M.E.J. Using confidence intervals in within-subject designs. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 1994, 1:476-490.
37. MacKay D.G., Shafto M., Taylor J.K., Marian D.E., Abrams L., Dyer J.R. Relations between emotion, memory, and attention: Evidence from taboo Stroop, lexical decision, and immediate memory tasks. Memory & Cognition 2004, 32:474-488.
38. Madan C.R., Glaholt M.G., Caplan J.B. The influence of item properties on association-memory. Journal of Memory and Language 2010, 63:46-63.
39. Mather M., Mitchell K.J., Raye C.L., Novak D.L., Greene E.J., Johnson M.K. Emotional arousal can impair feature binding in working memory. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2006, 18:614-625.
40. Mathewson K.J., Arnell K.M., Mansfield C.A. Capturing and holding attention: The impact of emotional words in rapid serial visual presentation. Memory & Cognition 2008, 36:182-200.
41. Medler, D. A., & Binder, J. R. (2005). MCWord: An on-line orthographic database of the English language. <>. http://www.neuro.mcw.edu/mcword/.
42. Miu A.C., Heilman R.M., Opre A., Miclea M. Emotion-induced retrograde amnesia and trait anxiety. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 2005, 31:1250-1257.
43. Onoda K., Okamoto Y., Yamawaki S. Neural correlates of associative memory: The effects of negative emotion. Neuroscience Research 2009, 64:50-55.
44. Phelps E.A. Human emotion and memory: interactions of the amygdala and hippocampal complex. Current Opinions in Neurobiology 2004, 14:198-202.
45. Philips L. Hanging on the metaphone. Computer Language Magazine 1990, 71:238-244.
46. Philips L. The double metaphone search algorithm. C/C++ User's Journal 2000, 18:38-43.
47. Pierce B.H., Kensinger E.A. Effects of emotion on associative recognition: Valence and retention interval matter. Emotion 2011, 11:139-144.
48. Raaijmakers J.G.W., Shiffrin R.M. Search of associative memory. Psychological Review 1981, 88:93-134.
49. Rubin D.C., Friendly M. Predicting which words get recalled: measures of free recall, availability, goodness, emotionality, and pronunciability for 925 nouns. Memory & Cognition 1986, 14:79-94.
50. Runcie D., O'Bannon R.M. An independence of induced amnesia and emotional response. American Journal of Psychology 1977, 90:55-61.
51. Schmidt S.R. Outstanding memories: The positive and negative effects of nudes on memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 2002, 28:353-361.
52. Schmidt S.R., Saari B. The emotional memory effect: Differential processing or item distinctiveness?. Memory & Cognition 2007, 35:1905-1916.
53. Siddiqui A.P., Unsworth N. Investigating the role of emotion during the search process in free recall. Memory & Cognition 2011, 39:1387-1400.
54. Siegrist M. Effects of taboo words on color-naming performance on a Stroop test. Perceptual and Motor Skills 1995, 81:1119-1122.
55. Smith A.P.R., Henson R.N.A., Rugg M.D., Dolan R.J. Modulation of retrieval processing reflects accuracy of emotional source memory. Learning & Memory 2005, 12:472-479.
56. Strange B.A., Hurlemann R., Dolan R.J. An emotion-induced retrograde amnesia in humans is amygdala- and β-adrenergic-dependent. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2003, 100:13626-13631.
57. Talmi D., Moscovitch M. Can semantic relatedness explain the enhancement of memory for emotional words?. Memory & Cognition 2004, 32:742-751.
58. Touryan S.R., Marian D.E., Shimamura A.P. Effect of negative emotional pictures on associative memory for peripheral information. Memory 2007, 15:154-166.
59. Wilson M.D. The MRC psycholinguistic database: Machine readable dictionary, version 2. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 1988, 6-11.
60. Zimmerman C.A., Kelley C.M. " I'll remember this!" Effects of emotionality on memory predictions versus memory performance. Journal of Memory and Language 2010, 62:240-253.