Xie Weizhen, Zhang Weiwei
Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA, United States.
Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, CA, United States.
Cognition. 2017 Sep;166:73-83. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.025. Epub 2017 May 26.
Negative emotion sometimes enhances memory (higher accuracy and/or vividness, e.g., flashbulb memories). The present study investigates whether it is the qualitative (precision) or quantitative (the probability of successful retrieval) aspect of memory that drives these effects. In a visual long-term memory task, observers memorized colors (Experiment 1a) or orientations (Experiment 1b) of sequentially presented everyday objects under negative, neutral, or positive emotions induced with International Affective Picture System images. In a subsequent test phase, observers reconstructed objects' colors or orientations using the method of adjustment. We found that mnemonic precision was enhanced under the negative condition relative to the neutral and positive conditions. In contrast, the probability of successful retrieval was comparable across the emotion conditions. Furthermore, the boost in memory precision was associated with elevated subjective feelings of remembering (vividness and confidence) and metacognitive sensitivity in Experiment 2. Altogether, these findings suggest a novel precision-based account for emotional memories.
消极情绪有时会增强记忆（更高的准确性和/或生动性，例如闪光灯记忆）。本研究调查了驱动这些效应的是记忆的定性（精确性）还是定量（成功检索的概率）方面。在一项视觉长期记忆任务中，观察者在由国际情感图片系统图像诱发的消极、中性或积极情绪下，记住了依次呈现的日常物体的颜色（实验1a）或方向（实验1b）。在随后的测试阶段，观察者使用调整法重建物体的颜色或方向。我们发现，与中性和积极条件相比，消极条件下的记忆精确性得到了提高。相比之下，成功检索的概率在不同情绪条件下相当。此外，在实验2中，记忆精确性的提高与记忆的主观感受（生动性和信心）增强以及元认知敏感性有关。总之，这些发现为情绪记忆提出了一种基于精确性的新解释。
