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The coupling of emotion and cognition in the eye: Introducing the pupil old/new effect
Author(s) -
Võ Melissa L.H.,
Jacobs Arthur M.,
Kuchinke Lars,
Hofmann Markus,
Conrad Markus,
Schacht Annekathrin,
Hutzler Florian
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.2007.00606.x
Subject(s) - psychology , cognition , pupil , cognitive psychology , cognitive science , developmental psychology , neuroscience
The study presented here investigated the effects of emotional valence on the memory for words by assessing both memory performance and pupillary responses during a recognition memory task. Participants had to make speeded judgments on whether a word presented in the test phase of the experiment had already been presented (“old”) or not (“new”). An emotion‐induced recognition bias was observed: Words with emotional content not only produced a higher amount of hits, but also elicited more false alarms than neutral words. Further, we found a distinct pupil old/new effect characterized as an elevated pupillary response to hits as opposed to correct rejections. Interestingly, this pupil old/new effect was clearly diminished for emotional words. We therefore argue that the pupil old/new effect is not only able to mirror memory retrieval processes, but also reflects modulation by an emotion‐induced recognition bias.