Siegel Alexander Lm, Graup Rachel S, Castel Alan D
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2020 Jan;73(1):134-145. doi: 10.1177/1747021819867292. Epub 2019 Aug 18.
There are documented deficits in older adults' abilities to bind numerical information to other types of information, perhaps due to the arbitrariness and specificity of numbers. Although some studies have found that memory for associative details is more accurate for emotionally salient information than for emotionally neutral information, other research has failed to find this benefit. We investigated whether older adults' associative memory deficit for numerical information may be reduced when information is encountered in an emotionally salient context. We presented younger and older adults with numerical information in a sentence that was emotionally positive, negative, or neutral and later asked them to recall the numbers when given their corresponding context. Although younger adults recalled more information than older adults, both groups of participants recalled more numbers in emotionally valenced as compared with emotionally neutral contexts, with the most accurate memory for numbers in the highly arousing negative context. Both groups of participants also rated the negative information as more important and easier to remember. These results provide evidence that emotion-enhanced binding is consistent between younger and older adults in some contexts and that memory for specific and arbitrary numerical information may be more accurate in an emotionally salient as compared with emotionally neutral context.
有文献记载，老年人将数字信息与其他类型信息相联系的能力存在缺陷，这可能是由于数字的任意性和特殊性所致。尽管一些研究发现，对于情感上突出的信息，关联细节的记忆比对情感上中性的信息更准确，但其他研究并未发现这种优势。我们调查了在情感突出的情境中遇到信息时，老年人对数字信息的关联记忆缺陷是否会减少。我们向年轻和年长的成年人呈现包含情感积极、消极或中性句子的数字信息，随后在给出相应情境时要求他们回忆数字。尽管年轻成年人比年长成年人回忆起更多信息，但与情感中性情境相比，两组参与者在有情感倾向的情境中都能回忆起更多数字，在高度唤起的消极情境中对数字的记忆最为准确。两组参与者也都将消极信息评为更重要且更容易记忆。这些结果表明，在某些情境中，年轻和年长成年人在情感增强的关联方面是一致的，并且与情感中性情境相比，在情感突出的情境中，对特定和任意数字信息的记忆可能更准确。
