Department of Psychology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
Cogn Emot. 2011 Nov;25(7):1237-45. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2010.538373. Epub 2011 May 24.
Emotional information is often remembered better than neutral information, but this enhancement can come at the cost of memory for non-emotional stimuli presented alongside emotionally salient items. Two encoding-related factors have been proposed to influence the magnitude of this trade-off: The intensity of the affective response to the scenes (which increases the trade-off) and the cognitive control exerted to process the scenes (which decreases the trade-off). The present study examined the relative importance of these two factors by assessing the effect of cognitive reappraisal on the magnitude of the trade-off effect. Cognitive reappraisal refers to the implementation of cognitive strategies to assist a person in changing the intensity of their response to an experience. Thus, reappraisal provides a way to assess both of the factors that are important for the elicitation of the trade-off. The results revealed that when participants were asked to view the scenes, without cognitive reappraisal, a robust memory trade-off occurred. But, when participants were asked to either heighten or decrease their emotional reactions via reappraisal, there was a reduction in the magnitude of the trade-off. These results suggest that the cognitive process of reappraising the scenes is sufficient to reduce the trade-off effect, even when such processing leads to an intensified affective response.
情绪信息通常比中性信息更容易被记住，但这种增强可能是以牺牲同时呈现的非情绪刺激的记忆为代价的。有两个与编码相关的因素被提出影响这种权衡的程度：对场景的情感反应的强度（增加权衡）和为处理场景而施加的认知控制（减少权衡）。本研究通过评估认知重评对权衡效应大小的影响，来检验这两个因素的相对重要性。认知重评是指实施认知策略以帮助一个人改变对体验的反应强度。因此，重评提供了一种评估对权衡的产生很重要的两种因素的方法。结果表明，当要求参与者观看场景，而不进行认知重评时，会出现强烈的记忆权衡。但是，当要求参与者通过重评来增强或降低他们的情绪反应时，权衡的幅度会减小。这些结果表明，即使这种处理会导致情感反应加剧，对场景进行认知重评的认知过程足以减少权衡效应。
