Davidson Patrick S R, McFarland Craig P, Glisky Elizabeth L
University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2006 Dec;6(4):306-22. doi: 10.3758/cabn.6.4.306.
Emotional experiences are easier to remember than neutral ones, but whether memory for all aspects of an experience is improved by emotion remains unclear. Some researchers have argued that the influence of emotion on memory is different for item than for source information, whereas others have argued that emotion affects both similarly. Also, whether item and source memory are affected by emotion in older people in the same way as in young people is currently unclear. We examined item and source memory for emotional and neutral materials in young and older adults. Memory for emotional items was superior to memory for neutral items, whereas there was no difference in source memory. Overall, item and source memory were poorer in older people than in young people, but emotion seemed to have a similar effect on both age groups. Although emotional content was remembered better than neutral content, this benefit did not apply to source memory. However, varying the emotionality of the source (i.e., the voice in Experiment 3) improved memory for the source, and this effect was greater in young than in older people. Tone of voice had no effect on item memory in older people, but the effect was variable in the young and may depend on the extent to which the tone of voice moderates the interpretation of the content.
情绪体验比中性体验更容易被记住，但情绪是否会改善对一次体验所有方面的记忆仍不清楚。一些研究人员认为，情绪对记忆的影响在项目记忆和来源信息记忆方面有所不同，而另一些人则认为情绪对两者的影响相似。此外，目前尚不清楚老年人的项目记忆和来源记忆受情绪影响的方式是否与年轻人相同。我们研究了年轻人和老年人对情绪性和中性材料的项目记忆和来源记忆。对情绪性项目的记忆优于对中性项目的记忆，而来源记忆则没有差异。总体而言，老年人的项目记忆和来源记忆比年轻人差，但情绪似乎对两个年龄组有类似的影响。虽然情绪性内容比中性内容记得更好，但这种优势不适用于来源记忆。然而，改变来源的情绪性（即实验3中的声音）会改善对来源的记忆，且这种影响在年轻人中比在老年人中更大。声音语调对老年人的项目记忆没有影响，但在年轻人中这种影响是可变的，可能取决于声音语调对内容解释的调节程度。
