Emotion And Memory Article Index for
Emotion
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Emotion
 

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Emotion And Memory





EMOTION ENHANCING EFFECTS ON MEMORY


Emotionally arousing events are more likely to be recalled later than more neutral events, and the Amygdala plays an important role in this enhancement.


MEMORY NARROWING


One prominent hypothesis is that emotional arousal leads to a narrowing of attention, in which information in the periphery is less likely to be attended to and therefore less likely to be later remembered. Consistent with this hypothesis are findings of Weapon Focus , in which witnesses to a crime remember the gun or knife in great detail but remember little else about the scene.


EMOTION-INDUCED FORGETTING


Emotionally arousing stimuli can lead to Retrograde Amnesia for preceding events and Anterograde Amnesia for subsequent events. This has been demonstrated in lab studies with lists of words or pictures, in which people show impaired memory for stimuli appearing before or after arousing stimuli.


DEPRESSION AND MEMORY


Memory recall tends to be congruent with one's current mood, with depressed people more likely to recall negative events from the past.
In addition, depression is often associated with poor memory in general, as outlined here .


AGING AND EMOTIONAL MEMORY


The enhancing effects of emotional arousal on later memory recall tend to be maintained among older adults. However, they also show somewhat of a shift towards favoring positive over negative information in memory, leading to a Positivity Effect .


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REFERENCES

  • Canli, T., Zhao, Z., Brewer, J., Gabrieli, J.D.E., and Cahill, L. (2000). Activation in the human amygdala associates event-related arousal with later memory for individual emotional experience. The Journal of Neuroscience, 20 , RC99 (1-5). PDF

  • Hertel, P. (2004). Memory for emotional and nonemotional events in depression: A question of habit? In D. Reisberg and P. Hertel, (Eds.) Memory and Emotion. NY: Oxford University Press, 186-216.

  • Mather, M. (2004). Aging and emotional memory. In D. Reisberg and P. Hertel, (Eds.) Memory and Emotion. NY: Oxford University Press, 272-307. PDF

  • Strange, B. A., Hurlemann, R., & Dolan, R. J. (2003). An emotion-induced retrograde amnesia in humans is amygdala- and beta-adrenergic-dependent. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100, 13626-13631. PDF

  • Reisberg, D., & Heuer, F. (2004). Memory for emotional events. In D. Reisberg and P. Hertel, (Eds.) Memory and Emotion. NY: Oxford University Press, 3-41.



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