Waring Jill D, Payne Jessica D, Schacter Daniel L, Kensinger Elizabeth A
Boston College, Department of Psychology, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA.
Cogn Emot. 2010 Jan 1;24(1):150-167. doi: 10.1080/02699930802618918.
After seeing a scene containing an emotional component (e.g., a snake in a forest) people often demonstrate a "trade-off" in memory, where memory for the emotional component (e.g., the snake) is good, but memory for the nonemotional elements (e.g., the forest) is poor. The result is an incomplete memory retaining central emotional information at the expense of neutral background information. Though almost everyone demonstrates the trade-off, there may be individual differences in the magnitude of the effect. We investigated whether differences in the strength of the trade-off would correlate with anxiety levels, working memory capacity, and executive functioning abilities. Sixty-four participants studied scenes comprised of a negative or neutral item placed on a neutral background, and memory was later tested for items and backgrounds separately. The magnitude of the trade-off correlated positively with anxiety and negatively with visuospatial working memory and executive function. These results suggest that greater anxiety, poor visuospatial working memory, and poor executive function may inhibit formation of complete mental representations of these complex emotional scenes.
在观看包含情感成分的场景（例如森林中的一条蛇）后，人们在记忆方面常常表现出一种“权衡”，即对情感成分（例如蛇）的记忆良好，但对非情感元素（例如森林）的记忆较差。结果是形成了一种不完整的记忆，保留了核心情感信息，却牺牲了中性背景信息。尽管几乎每个人都会表现出这种权衡，但这种效应的程度可能存在个体差异。我们研究了权衡强度的差异是否与焦虑水平、工作记忆容量和执行功能能力相关。64名参与者观看了由放置在中性背景上的负面或中性物品组成的场景，随后分别对物品和背景的记忆进行了测试。权衡的程度与焦虑呈正相关，与视觉空间工作记忆和执行功能呈负相关。这些结果表明，更高的焦虑、较差的视觉空间工作记忆和较差的执行功能可能会抑制对这些复杂情感场景形成完整的心理表征。
