Kamp Siri-Maria, Potts Geoffrey F, Donchin Emanuel
Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA.
Psychophysiology. 2015 Dec;52(12):1599-609. doi: 10.1111/psyp.12537. Epub 2015 Sep 4.
We examined the factors that contribute to enhanced recall for emotionally arousing words by analyzing behavioral performance, the P300 as an index of distinctiveness, and the N400 as an index of semantic expectancy violation in a modified Von Restorff paradigm. While their EEG was recorded, participants studied three list types (1) neutral words including one emotionally arousing isolate (either positive or negative), (2) arousing, negative words including one neutral isolate, or (3) arousing, positive words including one neutral isolate. Immediately after each list, free recall was tested. Negative, but not positive, words exhibited enhanced recall when presented as isolates in lists of neutral words and elicited a larger P300 for subsequently recalled than not-recalled words. This suggests that arousing, negative words stand out and that their distinctiveness contributes to their superior recall. Positive valence had an enhancing effect on recall only when the list contained mostly other positive words. Neutral isolates placed in either positive or negative lists elicited an N400, suggesting that semantic expectations developed in emotional word lists regardless of valence. However, semantic relatedness appeared to more strongly contribute to recall for positive than negative words. Our results suggest that distinctiveness and semantic relatedness contribute to episodic encoding of arousing words, but the impact of each factor depends on both a word's valence and its context.
我们通过分析行为表现、作为独特性指标的P300以及在改良的冯·雷斯托夫范式中作为语义预期违背指标的N400，研究了有助于增强对情绪唤起性词语回忆的因素。在记录参与者脑电图的同时，他们学习三种列表类型：(1)中性词，包括一个情绪唤起性孤立词（积极或消极）；(2)唤起性消极词，包括一个中性孤立词；或(3)唤起性积极词，包括一个中性孤立词。每个列表学习后立即进行自由回忆测试。当消极词（而非积极词）作为中性词列表中的孤立词呈现时，其回忆增强，并且与未被回忆起的词相比，随后被回忆起的消极词引发更大的P300。这表明唤起性消极词更为突出，其独特性有助于其更好的回忆。只有当列表中大多是其他积极词时，正价才对回忆有增强作用。置于积极或消极列表中的中性孤立词引发N400，这表明无论价态如何，在情绪性词语列表中都会形成语义预期。然而，语义相关性对积极词回忆的贡献似乎比对消极词更强。我们的结果表明，独特性和语义相关性有助于情绪唤起性词语的情景编码，但每个因素的影响取决于词语的价态及其上下文。
