Sharot Tali, Phelps Elizabeth A
New York University, New York, NY 10003, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2004 Sep;4(3):294-306. doi: 10.3758/cabn.4.3.294.
Emotion may influence memory both by altering attention and perception during encoding and by affecting memory retention. To date, studies have focused on the enhancement of memory consolidation by arousal. However, they have failed to rule out a role for attention. To specifically link memory enhancement of arousing material to modulation of memory retention, we examined recognition of neutral and arousing words at two time points and under conditions that manipulate attention during encoding. Participants were briefly presented with an arousing or neutral word at the periphery, while fixating on a central word. Recognition of peripheral words was assessed either immediately or after 24 h. Whereas recognition of neutral words became worse over time, recognition of arousing words remained the same and was better than neutral word recognition at delay. The results indicate that arousal supports slower forgetting even when the difference in attentional resources allocated to stimuli is minimized.
情绪可能通过在编码过程中改变注意力和感知，以及影响记忆保持来影响记忆。迄今为止，研究主要集中在唤醒对记忆巩固的增强作用上。然而，这些研究未能排除注意力的作用。为了具体将引发性材料的记忆增强与记忆保持的调节联系起来，我们在两个时间点以及在编码过程中操纵注意力的条件下，考察了对中性词和引发性词的识别。参与者在注视中央单词时，会在外围短暂呈现一个引发性或中性单词。对周边单词的识别在呈现后立即或24小时后进行评估。随着时间的推移，中性词的识别变差，而引发性词的识别保持不变，并且在延迟时比中性词的识别更好。结果表明，即使分配给刺激的注意力资源差异最小化，唤醒也能支持更慢的遗忘。
