Department of Psychology, Ege University, Izmir, Turkey.
Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2023 Sep;76(9):1973-1989. doi: 10.1177/17470218221137347. Epub 2022 Nov 23.
Previous evidence has shown that, in a recognition memory task, emotion leads participants to make more false alarms and decreases response times (RTs) for false alarm responses. This pattern could arise because participants adopt more liberal responding for emotional stimuli and/or because emotional lures are more likely than neutral lures to produce misleading memory retrieval. Recently, Starns et al. designed a new recognition memory paradigm and found that the speed of memory errors shows the influence of misleading information resulting in unavoidable memory errors. This study investigates the basis of false alarms to emotional lures by testing predictions of the diffusion model for a recognition paradigm similar to that by Starns et al. Participants studied lists of emotional words and then completed an old-new recognition memory test. After each old-new decision, participants were asked to make a forced-choice recognition decision that provided a chance to correct possible errors on the preceding old-new decision. Under the assumption that emotion promotes misremembering, the diffusion model predicts that forced-choice accuracy should be lower for pairs with emotional versus neutral lures and that faster old-new errors should be associated with lower forced-choice accuracy. This study tested these predictions, providing theoretical insights into how emotion affects memory retrieval and further developing a new methodology for measuring recognition performance.
先前的证据表明，在识别记忆任务中，情绪会导致参与者产生更多的虚报，并降低对虚报反应的反应时间（RT）。这种模式可能是因为参与者对情绪刺激采用了更宽松的反应方式，或者因为情绪诱饵比中性诱饵更有可能产生误导性的记忆检索。最近，Starns 等人设计了一种新的识别记忆范式，发现记忆错误的速度受到误导信息的影响，从而导致不可避免的记忆错误。本研究通过测试扩散模型对类似于 Starns 等人的识别范式的预测，来研究对情绪诱饵的虚报的基础。参与者学习一系列情绪词汇，然后完成旧新识别记忆测试。在每次旧新决策之后，参与者被要求进行强制选择识别决策，这为纠正前面的旧新决策中的可能错误提供了机会。假设情绪会促进错误记忆，扩散模型预测，对于带有情绪诱饵和中性诱饵的对，强制选择准确性应该更低，并且更快的旧新错误应该与更低的强制选择准确性相关。本研究检验了这些预测，为情绪如何影响记忆检索提供了理论见解，并进一步开发了一种新的测量识别性能的方法。
