Watts Sarah, Buratto Luciano G, Brotherhood Emilie V, Barnacle Gemma E, Schaefer Alexandre
Department of Psychology, University of Durham, Durham, UK.
Psychophysiology. 2014 Jul;51(7):673-84. doi: 10.1111/psyp.12211. Epub 2014 Mar 27.
In this study, we report evidence that neural activity reflecting the encoding of emotionally neutral information in memory is reduced when neutral and emotional stimuli are intermixed during encoding. Specifically, participants studied emotional and neutral pictures organized in mixed lists (in which emotional and neutral pictures were intermixed) or in pure lists (only-neutral or only-emotional pictures) and performed a recall test. To estimate encoding efficiency, we used the Dm effect, measured with event-related potentials. Recall for neutral items was lower in mixed compared to pure lists and posterior Dm activity for neutral items was reduced in mixed lists, whereas it remained robust in pure lists. These findings might be caused by an asymmetrical competition for attentional and working memory resources between emotional and neutral information, which could be a major determinant of emotional memory effects.
在本研究中，我们报告了这样的证据：当在编码过程中中性刺激和情绪性刺激混合出现时，反映记忆中情绪中性信息编码的神经活动会减少。具体而言，参与者研究了以混合列表（其中情绪性图片和中性图片混合在一起）或纯列表（仅为中性图片或仅为情绪性图片）形式组织的情绪性和中性图片，并进行了回忆测试。为了评估编码效率，我们使用了通过事件相关电位测量的差异负波效应（Dm效应）。与纯列表相比，混合列表中中性项目的回忆率较低，并且混合列表中中性项目的后部差异负波活动减少，而在纯列表中该活动仍然很强劲。这些发现可能是由情绪性信息和中性信息之间对注意力和工作记忆资源的不对称竞争所导致的，这可能是情绪记忆效应的一个主要决定因素。
