Cocquyt Chantelle M, Wilson Isabel S, Madan Christopher R, Palombo Daniela J
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.
Cogn Emot. 2024 Sep 10:1-17. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2024.2397371.
Emotional events are often remembered better than neutral ones; however, emotion can also spill over and affect our memory for neutral experiences that precede an emotional event. Theories suggest that emotion can retroactively enhance memory for preceding neutral events that are considered high-priority while impairing memory for events deemed low-priority. However, the impact of conceptual relationships (i.e., semantic connections) between preceding neutral information and emotional events on memory for the preceding information has received little attention. This study investigated the influence of conceptual relatedness on the retroactive effects of emotion on memory. Participants sequentially encoded pairs of images that were high or low in conceptual relatedness, each comprising a neutral object followed by either a negative or neutral image. Participants returned the next day for a recognition memory assessment. The results indicated an interactive effect of emotion and conceptual relatedness on memory: In a "discovery" sample, memory was poorer for images preceding conceptually unrelated negative (vs. neutral) images, while the opposite pattern was seen for conceptually related images. In a "replication" sample, these effects were partially replicated, with the former impairment effect statistically observed but not the latter augmentation effect. Hence, conceptual relatedness affects how negative emotion influences memory.
情绪性事件往往比中性事件记忆得更深刻；然而，情绪也可能会蔓延并影响我们对情绪性事件之前的中性经历的记忆。理论表明，情绪可以追溯性地增强对被视为高优先级的先前中性事件的记忆，同时损害对被视为低优先级事件的记忆。然而，先前中性信息与情绪性事件之间的概念关系（即语义联系）对先前信息记忆的影响却很少受到关注。本研究调查了概念相关性对情绪对记忆的追溯效应的影响。参与者依次对概念相关性高或低的图像对进行编码，每对图像都由一个中性物体后跟一个负面或中性图像组成。参与者第二天返回进行识别记忆评估。结果表明情绪和概念相关性对记忆有交互作用：在一个“发现”样本中，对于概念上不相关的负面（与中性）图像之前的图像，记忆较差，而对于概念相关的图像则出现相反的模式。在一个“复制”样本中，这些效应部分得到了复制，前者的损害效应在统计上得到了观察，但后者的增强效应没有观察到。因此，概念相关性会影响负面情绪对记忆的影响。
