Morrow Erin, Clewett David
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, 5558 Pritzker Hall, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA.
Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci. 2025 Feb;25(1):154-172. doi: 10.3758/s13415-024-01229-1. Epub 2024 Oct 8.
Everyday experiences often overlap, challenging our ability to maintain distinct episodic memories. One way to resolve such interference is by exaggerating subtle differences between remembered events, a phenomenon known as memory repulsion. Here, we tested whether repulsion is influenced by emotional arousal, when resolving memory interference is perhaps most needed. We adapted an existing paradigm in which participants repeatedly studied object-face associations. Participants studied two different-colored versions of each object: a to-be-tested "target" and its not-to-be-tested "competitor" pair mate. The level of interference between target and competitor pair mates was manipulated by making the object colors either highly similar or less similar, depending on the participant group. To manipulate arousal, the competitor object-face associations were preceded by either a neutral tone or an aversive and arousing burst of white noise. Memory distortion for the color of the target objects was tested after each study round to examine whether memory distortions emerge after learning. We found that participants with greater sound-induced pupil dilations, an index of physiological arousal, showed greater memory attraction of target colors towards highly similar competitor colors. Greater memory attraction was also correlated with greater memory interference in the last round of learning. Additionally, individuals who self-reported higher trait anxiety showed greater memory attraction when one of the overlapping memories was associated with something aversive. Our findings suggest that memories of similar neutral and arousing events may blur together after repeated exposures, especially in individuals who show higher arousal responses and symptoms of anxiety.
日常经历常常相互重叠，这对我们维持清晰的情景记忆的能力构成了挑战。解决这种干扰的一种方法是夸大记忆事件之间的细微差异，这种现象被称为记忆排斥。在此，我们测试了在可能最需要解决记忆干扰时，排斥是否会受到情绪唤醒的影响。我们改编了一个现有范式，让参与者反复学习物体-面孔关联。参与者学习每个物体的两种不同颜色版本：一个待测试的“目标”及其非测试的“竞争”配对物。根据参与者分组，通过使物体颜色高度相似或不太相似来操纵目标与竞争配对物之间的干扰程度。为了操纵唤醒水平，在竞争物体-面孔关联之前，要么播放中性音调，要么播放厌恶且能引起唤醒的白噪声突发。在每个学习轮次后测试目标物体颜色的记忆扭曲，以检查学习后是否会出现记忆扭曲。我们发现，瞳孔因声音引起的扩张幅度更大（一种生理唤醒指标）的参与者，目标颜色对高度相似竞争颜色的记忆吸引力更强。更强的记忆吸引力也与最后一轮学习中更大的记忆干扰相关。此外，自我报告特质焦虑水平较高的个体，当其中一个重叠记忆与厌恶事物相关联时，表现出更强的记忆吸引力。我们的研究结果表明，相似的中性和唤醒事件的记忆在反复接触后可能会模糊在一起，尤其是在表现出更高唤醒反应和焦虑症状的个体中。
