Department of Psychology, Center for Mind and Brain, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
Stress. 2011 Mar;14(2):136-44. doi: 10.3109/10253890.2010.520376. Epub 2010 Oct 31.
Prior studies have indicated that post-encoding stress can protect memories from the effects of forgetting, and this has been taken as evidence that stress facilitates memory consolidation. However, it is not known whether stress acts by directly influencing the strength of the underlying memories or whether it influences the generation process that plays a critical role in tests such as free recall. To address this issue, we examined the effects of stress produced by skydiving on recognition memory for negative and neutral pictures. Relative to a non-stress control condition, post-encoding stress in males was found to increase recognition memory for neutral pictures. However, stress was not found to improve recognition for emotional pictures, nor was it found to influence recognition memory in female participants. Additional analysis of recognition performance suggested that stress increased familiarity-based recognition rather than recollection. This study indicates that stress can improve familiarity-based recognition, thus showing that stress directly increases the strength of the underlying memories.
先前的研究表明，编码后应激可以保护记忆免受遗忘的影响，这被认为是应激促进记忆巩固的证据。然而，目前尚不清楚应激是否通过直接影响潜在记忆的强度起作用，还是通过影响在自由回忆等测试中起着关键作用的生成过程起作用。为了解决这个问题，我们研究了跳伞产生的应激对负性和中性图片的再认记忆的影响。与非应激对照条件相比，发现男性在编码后应激时对中性图片的再认记忆增强。然而，应激并没有改善对情绪图片的再认，也没有影响女性参与者的再认记忆。对再认表现的进一步分析表明，应激增加了基于熟悉度的再认，而不是回忆。本研究表明，应激可以提高基于熟悉度的再认，从而表明应激直接增加了潜在记忆的强度。
