Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany.
Psychophysiology. 2018 Jul;55(7):e13069. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13069. Epub 2018 Feb 19.
Previous research found that memory is not only better for emotional information but also for neutral information that has been encoded in the context of an emotional event. In the present ERP study, we investigated two factors that may influence memory for neutral and emotional items: temporal proximity between emotional and neutral items during encoding, and retention interval (immediate vs. delayed). Forty-nine female participants incidentally encoded 36 unpleasant and 108 neutral pictures (36 neutral pictures preceded an unpleasant picture, 36 followed an unpleasant picture, and 36 neutral pictures were preceded and followed by neutral pictures) and participated in a recognition memory task either immediately (N = 24) or 1 week (N = 25) after encoding. Results showed better memory for emotional pictures relative to neutral pictures. In accordance, enhanced centroparietal old/new differences (500-900 ms) during recognition were observed for unpleasant compared to neutral pictures, most pronounced for the 1-week interval. Picture position effects, however, were only subtle. During encoding, late positive potentials for neutral pictures were slightly lower for neutral pictures following unpleasant ones, but only at trend level. To summarize, we could replicate and extend previous ERP findings showing that emotionally arousing events are better recollected than neutral events, particularly when memory is tested after longer retention intervals. Picture position during encoding, however, had only small effects on elaborative processing and no effects on memory retrieval.
先前的研究发现，记忆不仅对情绪信息更好，而且对在情绪事件背景下编码的中性信息也更好。在本 ERP 研究中，我们调查了两个可能影响中性和情绪项目记忆的因素：编码过程中情绪和中性项目之间的时间接近程度，以及保持间隔（即时与延迟）。49 名女性参与者偶然地编码了 36 张不愉快的和 108 张中性的图片（36 张中性图片在不愉快图片之前，36 张在不愉快图片之后，36 张中性图片在不愉快图片之前和之后），并在编码后立即（N=24）或 1 周后（N=25）参加了识别记忆任务。结果显示，情绪图片的记忆优于中性图片。相应地，与中性图片相比，不愉快图片在识别过程中引起了更强的中央顶叶新旧差异（500-900 毫秒），在 1 周的间隔中最为明显。然而，图片位置效应只是微弱的。在编码过程中，对于紧随不愉快图片之后的中性图片，中性图片的晚期正电位略低，但仅处于趋势水平。总之，我们可以复制和扩展先前的 ERP 发现，即情绪激动的事件比中性事件更容易被回忆起来，特别是在较长的保持间隔后进行记忆测试时。然而，编码过程中的图片位置对详细加工只有很小的影响，对记忆检索没有影响。
