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Effects of positive emotional events on memory
Author(s) -
CHRISTIANSON SVENÅKE
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1986.tb01207.x
Subject(s) - psychology , arousal , recall , context (archaeology) , international affective picture system , cognitive psychology , amnesia , affect (linguistics) , developmental psychology , audiology , social psychology , communication , paleontology , biology , medicine
Memory of positive emotional events (erotic pictures) was investigated in a paradigm often used in laboratory simulations of amnesia. After viewing mildly erotic pictures in the middle of a series of slides of an otherwise neutral character (Experiment I), or neutral pictures surrounded by erotic slides (Experiment 2), subjects were tested for memory (recall and recognition) of verbal descriptors presented along with the pictures. Emotional responses were evaluated by means of measurements of cardiac activity, and self‐ratings of affect, and showed that a state of positive emotional arousal was induced to subjects presented with erotic pictures. While no difference in memory performance was obtained when erotic pictures were presented in a context of neutral pictures, an increase in performance was obtained when neutral pictures were presented in a context of erotic pictures. Furthermore, subjects presented with only neutral pictures showed a higher memory performance as compared with subjects presented with only erotic pictures. Taken together, the reults were interpreted as showing that not only negative emotional arousal, as has been shown by previous research, but also positive emotional arousal, has negative effects on memory performance in this type of design, due to attentional division and contextual affects.