Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Effects of emotions on memory
Effects of emotions on memory
Effects of emotions on memory
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Effects of emotions on memory
Individuals often perceive emotionally-charged memories as more vivid than boring ones. While this line of thinking is intuitive, does the emotional significance of faces, words, and other stimuli have an actual effect on memory performance? A number of studies have examined this relationship, indicating that emotionally negative and positive stimuli both improve memory performance over neutral stimuli. However, other studies have addressed a number of caveats that add ambiguity to the equation. It is the goal of this paper to investigate and provide clarity toward the relationship between emotion and memory among young adults. Schmidt, Patnaik, and Kensinger (2011) compared the effects of emotional and non-emotional images on memory performance in order to determine whether emotional items are remembered more vividly or if there is a bias toward emotional stimuli. They hypothesized that positive and negative images would enhance recognition memory (Schmidt, Patnaik, & Kensinger, 2011). In the experiment, 24 college students analyzed a collection of 540 images that held a random combination of negative, positive, and neutral emotional significance. Additionally, the emotional images were divided as being either low or high arousal. After the study phase, the participants were immediately subjected to a surprise recognition test for the previous images. The students were shown 270 new images with 270 images that they had previously seen. The results of the experiment indicate that positive-high arousal images were more accurately recognized than negative-high arousal images. However, negative-low arousal images were better remembered than positive-low arousal images. Overall, the emotionally arousing images were more often rec...
... middle of paper ...
...ificant relationship between recognition memory and emotion.
References
Atienza, M., Cantero, J. L. (2008). Modulatory effects of emotion and sleep on recollection and familiarity. Journal of Sleep Research, 17(3), 285-294.
Gutpa, R., Srinivasan, N. (2009). Emotions help memory for faces: Role of whole and parts. Cognition and Emotion, 23(4), 807-816.
Schmidt, K., Patnaik, P., Kensinger, E. A. (2011). Emotion’s influence on memory for spatial and temporal context. Cognition and Emotion, 25(2), 229-243.
Windmann, S., Chmielewski, A. (2008). Emotion-induced modulation of recognition memory decisions in a Go/NoGo task: Response bias or memory bias? Cognition and Emotion, 22(5), 761-776.
Xing, C., Isaacowitz, D. M. (2006). Aiming at happiness: How motivation affects attention to and memory for emotional images. Motivation and Emotion, 30(3), 249-256.
What do events like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, The Challenger space shuttle disaster, and hurricane Andrew that shook Miami have in common? All these events can be remembered by the people who experienced it due to flashbulb memory. Flashbulb memories were defined by R. Brown and J. Kulik (1977) as vivid, detailed, and long-lasting memories for attributes of the reception context of public news (Curci, A., & Lanciano, T., 2009). The people who experience such huge events are certain that their flashbulb memories are very accurate and can give in detail what occurred to them in those events (Schwartz, 2013). Furthermore events that generate flashbulb memories are usually very surprising and emotionally arousing and are perceived by the subject as personally consequential (Emotion & Memory 1993). But not all memories need to be negative and tragic. Events like the first day of first grade, your first romantic kiss, your first day at a new job, or recital of your wedding vows can also be described as flashbulb memories (Schwartz, 2013).
van den Hout, M., Eidhof, M., Verboom, J., Littel, M., & Engelhard, I. (2013). Blurring of emotional and non-emotional memories by taxing working memory during recall. Cognition & Emotion,
4)Summary of Research at Stephen Maren's Emotion and Memory Systems Laboratory at the University of Michigan. http://maren1.psych.lsa.umich.edu/Research.html
...These specifics recalled consist of things which, under normal conditions, we probably would not have ever remembered. The number of detailed facts retained about a particular situation is usually commensurate to the intensity of involvement or proximity to the action in question; therefore, it can be reasonably concluded that while these memories are not always perfectly engrained into our minds, interesting arguments exist which support the possibility of substantial and long-term recall of these matters.
Rasch, B., & Born, J. (2008). Reactivation and consolidation of memory during sleep. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17, 188-192. doi: 10.1111/j.14678721.2008.00572.x
Flashbulb memory is when a person learns or experiences a very surprising and emotional arousing events (Matlin, 155). As it is a long lasting memory that people report vivid details about a traumatic event, it has been the subjects of recent scientific studies. Recent findings have mentioned a relationship between flashbulb memory and the September 11, 2001 attack. An article published in the American Psychological Association entitled “Seared in Our Memories” written by Bridget Murray Law analyzes different studies on the topic to explore how accurate people vividly remember about the 9/11 attack, and on how much is accurate or fabricated through various encounters. After reading the article, Law mentions interesting researchers concluding
These differences turned out to be due to the details of the procedure, they performed separate scans for the actual presented words, and the not presented but related words, and for unrelated new words (Schacter, 2001). Epinephrine and norepinephrine also have shown to improve memory because increase glucose levels in the blood, and they affect the amygdala, which plays a part in emotional memory (Durand, 2005). Neurons in the basolateral amygdala that were activated during a fear conditioning were activated again during memory retrieval of the feared object. The amount of reactivated neurons showed a correlation with the behavior associated of that fear memory; this indicates a correlation between neurons of the amygdala and memory (Scripps, 2007).
Quas, J. A., Goodman, G. S., Bidrose, S., Pipe, M., Craw, S., & Albin, D. S. (1999). Emotion and memory: Children's long-term remembering, forgetting, and suggestibility. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 72, 235-270.
Garry, M., & Palaschek, D. L. (2000). Imagination and Memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9, 6-9.
Farrants, J. (1998, September). The 'false' memory debate. Counseling Psychology Quarterly. Retrieved September 14, 2000 from ProQuest database (Bell & Howell Information and Learning-ProQuest) on the World Wide Web: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb
People are more likely to remember events that have more emotion attached to them. Studies have shown a correlation of 71% between participants’ ratings of their memories vividness and their ratings of how emotional events had been (Reisberg, Heuer, McLean & O’Shaughnessy, 1988,
Emotion is the “feeling” aspect of consciousness that includes physical, behavioral, and subjective (cognitive) elements. Emotion also contains three elements which are physical arousal, a certain behavior that can reveal outer feelings and inner feelings. One key part in the brain, the amygdala which is located within the limbic system on each side of the brain, plays a key role in emotional processing which causes emotions such as fear and pleasure to be involved with the human facial expressions.The common-sense theory of emotion states that an emotion is experienced first, leading to a physical reaction and then to a behavioral reaction.The James-Lange theory states that a stimulus creates a physiological response that then leads to the labeling of the emotion. The Cannon-Bard theory states that the physiological reaction and the emotion both use the thalamus to send sensory information to both the cortex of the brain and the organs of the sympathetic nervous system. The facial feedback hypothesis states that facial expressions provide feedback to the brain about the emotion being expressed on the face, increasing all the emotions. In Schachter and Singer’s cognitive arousal theory, also known as the two-factor theory, states both the physiological arousal and the actual arousal must occur before the emotion itself is experienced, based on cues from the environment. Lastly, in the cognitive-mediational theory
Perceiving emotions accurately is the first step to understanding them. In most cases, the ability to decipher body language and non-verbal communication is key. The second step is reasoning with emotions. This requires an individual to use emotions to promote thinking processes and cognitive ability. Our emotions help d...
The present paper illustrates my reflections regarding the article “Memory and Aging: Selected Research Directions and Application Issues”, the third lecture “Psychosocial Issues”, and our class discussion. All of them brought up important issues regarding the psychological health of older adults, however, one theme was common across them: the role of social interaction on cognition and emotion.
Rasch, Björn, and Jan Born. "About Sleep 's Role in Memory." Physiological Reviews. American Physiological Society, n.d. Web. 06 May 2016.