Effect of Emotion and Type of Encoding on Memory for Actions: Verbal and Subject-Performed Tasks

Emotion in action: A study on the enactment effect on emotional action sentences

While abundant literature suggests that both performing congruent actions and emotional stimuli can enhance memory, their combined impact on memory for action phrases remains underexplored. This study investigated the effects of enactment with emotionally charged stimuli on memory performance. Sixty participants encoded action sentences with negative, neutral, or positive emotional connotations using either enactment or verbal-reading methods. Memory performance was assessed through immediate free recall tasks and a delayed yes-no recognition task. Results demonstrated a significant memory advantage for action-enacted sentences compared to verbal reading in recall and recognition tasks. Moreover, recall accuracy was higher for negative action sentences, while recognition performance was enhanced for negative and positive sentences. No interaction was found between encoding type and emotional connotation in memory tasks. Our findings revealed that both enactment and valence independently enhance memory performance, extending the benefits of enactment to emotional stimuli. Furthermore, our results highlight the differential effects of valence on free recall and recognition tasks, suggesting task-specific processes related to memory for negative and positive stimuli.

Memory biases in Alzheimer's disease and mild cognitive impairment. A systematic review and metanalysis

Several studies demonstrated that individuals are more likely to remember emotional than neutral information; this phenomenon is known as emotional enhancement of memory (EEM). Adults generally tend to remember negative information more efficiently than neutral or positive items. In contrast, healthy elders seem to show an opposite bias for positive information, but results are inconsistent, also because during aging, elaboration of emotional information could change as a consequence of cognitive impairment. In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we conducted literature search of studies investigating emotion memory biases in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) on PubMed, Scopus and PsycINFO databases following PRISMA guidelines. The findings showed that emotional memory biases are still present despite the presence of cognitive impairment, both in MCI and at least in early stages of AD. However, the direction of emotion memory biases is not consistent across studies. These results suggest that patients with cognitive impairment might still benefit from EEM and help to define targets of intervention for cognitive rehabilitation in pathological aging.

Does Informal Education Training Increase Awareness of Anaphylaxis among Students of Medicine? Before-After Survey Study

Allergies are among the most common chronic diseases in Europe. The most serious complication is anaphylactic shock. Most cases occur outside the hospital; thus, knowledge of symptoms and first aid is crucial. This study aimed to evaluate the awareness of anaphylaxis and the ability to use adrenaline auto-injectors among medical students, and to determine an improvement after training based on non-formal education. The research was conducted among 364 medicine students (years 1–5) from the Medical University of Gdańsk, with year-specific curriculum-based general medical knowledge. Training consisted of pre-test, practical training and post-test. Descriptive statistics were used to reveal the characteristics of students from different grades. A Mann–Whitney U test was used for statistical analysis. The tested students did not have sufficient knowledge to provide first aid in cases of anaphylaxis before training. There was an increase in knowledge (on average, 28.6%, p = 0.005) after training. Almost all (99.4%) of the respondents believed that they would be able to use an adrenaline auto-injector in case of emergency after the training. The training based on non-formal education was effective. The use of the subject-performed task method helped students to remember the stages of action in stressful situations.

Integrative representation of semantic and motor information underlies the enactment effect in memory for actions

The present study adopted the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) effect to determine whether semantic representation might favour the enactment effect, in which noun-verb phrases are remembered better by enacting during learning (subject-performed tasks, SPTs) than by studying verbally (verbal tasks, VTs). Experiment 1 controlled the semantic category to investigate the RIF effect in SPT vs. VT conditions. The RIF effect was similar irrespective of the mode of encoding (SPT vs.VT), indicating that semantic representation was not the main factor for favouring the enactment effect. Furthermore, Experiment 2 added motor physical properties to simultaneously control the semantic category and one category by motor features. The results of Experiment 2 showed stronger cooperative representation of semantic and motor information under the VT condition, indicating that the processing of action memory may be conceptual.

The Effects of Language and Semantic Repetition on the Enactment Effect of Action Memory

Humans exhibit enhanced memory performance when information is encoded by physically enacting it, as opposed to passively reading or hearing the same information; an effect referred to as "enactment effect." The present study explored the effects of language (native vs. non-native) and semantic repetition (repeated vs. non-repeated) on the enactment effect in action memory. Forty-eight subjects learned action phrases either by enacting or by reading the items. Results showed (i) better memory for enacted phrases, (ii) better memory for non-native repeated phrases that were only read, (iii) no difference in memory between repeated and non-repeated phrases that were enacted, and (iv) that semantic repetition affected memory of phrases that were read but not of those that were enacted. Partly in line with the multimodal theory, findings support that enacting action phrases can enhance item-specific processing and that this is insensitive to cognitive strategies like semantic repetition.