NEVER forget: negative emotional valence enhances recapitulation

Differentiating the DF effect in episodic memory: evaluating the contribution of the procedures of collaborative memory

Existing research has demonstrated a significant directed forgetting (DF) effect in memory. However, it remains unclear whether this phenomenon would occur in the context of interpersonal collaboration. Additionally, the contribution of emotional valence to the DF effect in item memory and source memory (which are subtypes of episodic memory) also needs to be explored. To address these issues, we conducted two experiments that combined the collaborative memory paradigm with the item-method procedure of DF. In both experiments, positive, neutral, or negative words were presented as stimuli, each followed by an R/F cue during encoding. We conducted two recalls, labeled Recall 1 and Recall 2, which consisted of both memory tasks. Recall 1 was performed either individually or collaboratively, whereas Recall 2 was done individually. Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 adopted the free-flowing procedure and the turn-taking procedure of collaborative memory, respectively. We obtained three implications from our current findings. (a) The occurrence of the DF effect in item memory was found regardless of the procedure of collaborative memory, and it was insensitive to the emotional valence of words or to whether participants had collaborated or not. These patterns demonstrate that both the mechanisms of elaborative rehearsal and active suppression/encoding blocking were engaged across words of different emotional valences and in nominal and collaborative circumstances. (b) In source memory, the DF effect showed different patterns in ongoing and post-collaborative memory, which underpins the dual-process models. (c) The amplitude of the DF effect was sensitive to the interaction of emotional valence by the status of collaboration, and the impact of collaboration differed between the two experiments, offering telling evidence of different aspects of the retrieval strategy disruption hypothesis (RSDH). Directions for identifying more influential factors are put forward.

Emotional state dynamics impacts temporal memory

Emotional fluctuations are ubiquitous in everyday life, but precisely how they sculpt the temporal organisation of memories remains unclear. Here, we designed a novel task - the Emotion Boundary Task - wherein participants viewed sequences of negative and neutral images surrounded by a colour border. We manipulated perceptual context (border colour), emotional-picture valence, as well as the direction of emotional-valence shifts (i.e., shifts from neutral-to-negative and negative-to-neutral events) to create events with a shared perceptual and/or emotional context. We measured memory for temporal order and temporal distances for images processed within and across events. Negative images processed within events were remembered as closer in time compared to neutral ones. In contrast, temporal distances were remembered as longer for images spanning neutral-to-negative shifts - suggesting temporal dilation in memory with the onset of a negative event following a previously-neutral state. The extent of negative-picture induced temporal dilation in memory correlated with dispositional negativity across individuals. Lastly, temporal order memory was enhanced for recently-presented negative (versus neutral) images. These findings suggest that emotional-state dynamics matters when considering emotion-temporal memory interactions: While persistent negative events may compress subjectively remembered time, dynamic shifts from neutral-to-negative events produce temporal dilation in memory, with implications for adaptive emotional functioning.

Eye tracking evidence for the reinstatement of emotionally negative and neutral memories

Recent eye tracking studies have linked gaze reinstatement-when eye movements from encoding are reinstated during retrieval-with memory performance. In this study, we investigated whether gaze reinstatement is influenced by the affective salience of information stored in memory, using an adaptation of the emotion-induced memory trade-off paradigm. Participants learned word-scene pairs, where scenes were composed of negative or neutral objects located on the left or right side of neutral backgrounds. This allowed us to measure gaze reinstatement during scene memory tests based on whether people looked at the side of the screen where the object had been located. Across two experiments, we behaviorally replicated the emotion-induced memory trade-off effect, in that negative object memory was better than neutral object memory at the expense of background memory. Furthermore, we found evidence that gaze reinstatement was related to recognition memory for the object and background scene components. This effect was generally comparable for negative and neutral memories, although the effects of valence varied somewhat between the two experiments. Together, these findings suggest that gaze reinstatement occurs independently of the processes contributing to the emotion-induced memory trade-off effect.

How emotional contexts modulate item memory in individuals with high and low negative affect and worry

Emotional stimuli are usually remembered with high confidence. Yet, it remains unknown whether-in addition to memory for the emotional stimulus itself-memory for a neutral stimulus encountered just after an emotional one can be enhanced. Further, little is known about the interplay between emotion elicited by a stimulus and emotion relating to affective dispositions. To address these questions, we examined (1) how emotional valence and arousal of a context image preceding a neutral item image affect memory of the item, and (2) how such memory modulation is affected by two hallmark features of emotional disorders: trait negative affect and tendency to worry. In two experiments, participants encoded a series of trials in which an emotional (negative, neutral, or positive) context image was followed by a neutral item image. In experiment 1 (n = 42), items presented seconds after negative context images were remembered better and with greater confidence compared to those presented after neutral and positive ones. Arousal ratings of negative context images were higher compared to neutral and positive ones and the likelihood of correctly recognizing an item image was related to higher arousal of the context image. In experiment 2 (n = 59), better item memory was related to lower trait negative affect. Participants with lower trait negative affect or tendency to worry displayed higher confidence compared to those with high negative affect or tendency to worry. Our findings describe an emotional "carry-over" effect elicited by a context image that enhances subsequent item memory on a trial-by-trial basis, however, not in individuals with high trait negative affect who seem to have a general memory disadvantage.

Emotional state dynamics impacts temporal memory

Emotional fluctuations are ubiquitous in everyday life, but precisely how they sculpt the temporal organization of memories remains unclear. Here, we designed a novel task-the Emotion Boundary Task-wherein participants viewed sequences of negative and neutral images surrounded by a color border. We manipulated perceptual context (border color), emotional valence, as well as the direction of emotional-valence shifts (i.e., shifts from neutral-to-negative and negative-to-neutral events) to create encoding events comprised of image sequences with a shared perceptual and/or emotional context. We measured memory for temporal order and subjectively remembered temporal distances for images processed within and across events. Negative images processed within events were remembered as closer in time compared to neutral ones. In contrast, temporal distance was remembered as longer for images spanning neutral-to-negative shifts-suggesting temporal dilation in memory with the onset of a negative event following a previously-neutral state. The extent of this negative-picture induced temporal dilation in memory correlated with dispositional negativity across individuals. Lastly, temporal order memory was enhanced for recently presented negative (compared to neutral) images. These findings suggest that emotional-state dynamics matters when considering emotion-temporal memory interactions: While persistent negative events may compress subjectively remembered time, dynamic shifts from neutral to negative events produce temporal dilation in memory, which may be relevant for adaptive emotional functioning.

Proposing immersive virtual reality scenarios for validating verbal content analysis methods in adult samples

Verbal content analyses to differentiate truthful and fabricated statements, such as the Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA), are used in lie detection research as well as in practice to assess the credibility of statements in criminal court proceedings. Meta-analyses demonstrate validity of verbal content analyses above chance, but the traditional research paradigms usually lack either ecological or internal validity. The authors discuss the usage of immersive virtual reality scenarios to solve this dilemma, as both types of validity can be increased by this approach. In this integrative review of existing literature on the current use of virtual scenarios in forensic and victimology research, the authors extract strengths and limitations for possible VR studies in the context of verbal content analysis. Furthermore, novel ethical challenges involved are summarized and implications for future studies proposed. Overall, we argue in favor of using virtual reality scenarios to validate methods for verbal content analysis, but also urge to consider ethical limitations regarding unwanted short- and long-term aftereffects.

Emotions and worries during 1.5 years of the COVID-19 pandemic - how adults with and without mental health conditions coped with the crisis

BACKGROUND

During the COVID 19 pandemic, there were social restrictions with severe mental stress for a long time. Most studies on mental health consequences of the pandemic focused primarily on the beginning of the pandemic. The present study on families of patients or study participants of a child and adolescent psychiatry aimed to examine long-term profiles of emotions and worries in adults with and without mental health condition (mhc) during the first 1.5 years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

METHODS

We surveyed emotions and worries of 128 adults with (n = 32) and without (n = 96) pre-pandemic mhc over a 1.5-year study period from spring 2020 until summer/autumn 2021. Emotions and worries were captured at four time points: [i] pre-pandemic, [ii] spring 2020 (first lockdown was implemented), [iii] December 2020 (hard lockdown at Christmas time) and [iv] summer/autumn 2021 (considerable ease of regulations); [i] pre-pandemic and [iii] December 2020 were measured retrospectively). First, we run non-parametric tests to compare emotions and worries between adults with and without pre-pandemic mhc at the four time points. Next, we conducted latent profile analysis to identify subgroups from the total sample who share similar trajectories of emotions and worries. Finally, a logistic regression analysis was run to examine whether socio-demographic and psycho-social factors were related to identified trajectories of emotions and worries.

RESULTS

Adults without pre-pandemic mhc reported a strong worsening of emotions and worries at the beginning of the pandemic and a lower worsening during the course, while adults with pre-pandemic mhc reported a constant worsening of emotions and worries. The latent profile analysis revealed three profiles of adults who show either i) an adaption, ii) no adaption or iii) a continuous high condition. With increasing age, higher perceived stress and pre-pandemic mhc, the likelihood of an adaption was increased.

CONCLUSION

The results of the present study suggested that adults (both with and without pre-pandemic mhc) coped the crisis with different strategies and that most of them returned to their initial, pre-pandemic levels of emotions and worries when social restrictions were considerably eased or stopped.

Valence and concreteness in item recognition: Evidence against the affective embodiment account

The Affective Embodiment Account posits that sensorimotor interactions play an important role in learning and processing concrete words whereas experiences from emotional states play an important role in learning and processing abstract words. Because of this, there should be greater enhancement of valence for abstract than for concrete words and therefore there should be an interaction between valence and concreteness. Although this prediction has been observed in a number of tasks, very few studies have looked specifically at memory. Three experiments are reported that assess whether valence interacts with concreteness in recognition. In Experiment 1, recognition of concrete words was better than abstract, but there was no difference as a function of whether the words were positive or negative and there was no interaction. Experiment 2 compared positive and neutral words and Experiment 3 compared negative and neutral words; in both, there was a concreteness effect but no effect of valence and no interaction. These results replicate previous findings that when positive and negative words are equated more fully, valence has no effect on recognition, and also suggest a limit on the scope of the Affective Embodiment Account.

Mood-congruent memory revisited

Affective experiences are commonly represented by either transient emotional reactions to discrete events or longer term, sustained mood states that are characterized by a more diffuse and global nature. While both have considerable influence in shaping memory, their interaction can produce mood-congruent memory (MCM), a psychological phenomenon where emotional memory is biased toward content affectively congruent with a past or current mood. The study of MCM has direct implications for understanding how memory biases form in daily life, as well as debilitating negative memory schemas that contribute to mood disorders such as depression. To elucidate the factors that influence the presence and strength of MCM, here we systematically review the literature for studies that assessed MCM by inducing mood in healthy participants. We observe that MCM is often reported as enhanced accuracy for previously encoded mood-congruent content or preferential recall for mood-congruent autobiographical events, but may also manifest as false memory for mood-congruent lures. We discuss the relevant conditions that shape these effects, as well as instances of mood-incongruent recall that facilitate mood repair. Further, we provide guiding methodological and theoretical considerations, emphasizing the limited neuroimaging research in this area and the need for a renewed focus on memory consolidation. Accordingly, we propose a theoretical framework for studying the neural basis of MCM based on the neurobiological underpinnings of mood and emotion. In doing so, we review evidence for associative network models of spreading activation, while also considering alternative models informed by the cognitive neuroscience literature of emotional memory bias. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

How list composition affects the emotional enhancement of memory in younger and older adults

Young adults show an immediate emotional enhancement of memory (EEM) when emotional and non-emotional information are presented in mixed lists but not pure lists, but it is unclear whether older adults' memories also benefit from the cognitive factors producing the list-composition effect. The present study examined whether the list-composition effect extended to older adults (55+), testing the following alternatives: (1) younger and older adults could show the list-composition effect, (2) due to age-related decreases in cognitive resources, older adults may show weaker effects of list-composition, or (3) due to age-related positivity effects, older adults' list-composition effect may vary by valence. Results supported the first alternative: the list-composition effect occurred for older as well as younger adults, when testing memory for pictures (Experiment 1) or words (Experiment 2). In a third experiment, we explored whether mixing information at only encoding or retrieval (and blocking in the other phase) would suffice for the list composition effect to occur. Results revealed that mixed encoding/blocked retrieval did not elicit the EEM in either age group. Overall, the results suggest age-related stability in the cognitive processes that give rise to the immediate EEM.

Does misremembering drive false alarms for emotional lures? A diffusion model investigation

Previous evidence has shown that, in a recognition memory task, emotion leads participants to make more false alarms and decreases response times (RTs) for false alarm responses. This pattern could arise because participants adopt more liberal responding for emotional stimuli and/or because emotional lures are more likely than neutral lures to produce misleading memory retrieval. Recently, Starns et al. designed a new recognition memory paradigm and found that the speed of memory errors shows the influence of misleading information resulting in unavoidable memory errors. This study investigates the basis of false alarms to emotional lures by testing predictions of the diffusion model for a recognition paradigm similar to that by Starns et al. Participants studied lists of emotional words and then completed an old-new recognition memory test. After each old-new decision, participants were asked to make a forced-choice recognition decision that provided a chance to correct possible errors on the preceding old-new decision. Under the assumption that emotion promotes misremembering, the diffusion model predicts that forced-choice accuracy should be lower for pairs with emotional versus neutral lures and that faster old-new errors should be associated with lower forced-choice accuracy. This study tested these predictions, providing theoretical insights into how emotion affects memory retrieval and further developing a new methodology for measuring recognition performance.

Emotional memory consolidation during sleep is associated with slow oscillation-spindle coupling strength in young and older adults

Emotional memories are processed during sleep; however, the specific mechanisms are unclear. Understanding such mechanisms may provide critical insight into preventing and treating mood disorders. Consolidation of neutral memories is associated with the coupling of NREM sleep slow oscillations (SOs) and sleep spindles (SPs). Whether SO-SP coupling is likewise involved in emotional memory processing is unknown. Furthermore, there is an age-related emotional valence bias such that sleep consolidates and preserves reactivity to negative but not positive emotional memories in young adults and positive but not negative emotional memories in older adults. If SO-SP coupling contributes to the effect of sleep on emotional memory, then it may selectively support negative memory in young adults and positive memory in older adults. To address these questions, we examined whether emotional memory recognition and overnight change in emotional reactivity were associated with the strength of SO-SP coupling in young (n = 22) and older (n = 32) adults. In younger adults, coupling strength predicted negative but not positive emotional memory performance after sleep. In contrast, coupling strength predicted positive but not negative emotional memory performance after sleep in older adults. Coupling strength was not associated with emotional reactivity in either age group. Our findings suggest that SO-SP coupling may play a mechanistic role in sleep-dependent consolidation of emotional memories.

Does Expecting Matter? The Impact of Experimentally Established Expectations on Subsequent Memory Retrieval of Emotional Words

Previous studies have confirmed that different degrees of expectation, including the bipolarity of the expected and unexpected, as well as an intermediate level (no expectation), can affect memory. However, only a few investigations have manipulated expectation through experimentally established schema, with no consideration of how expectation impacts both item and source memory. Furthermore, stimulus emotionality may also impact memory. Therefore, we conducted a study to investigate the effects of three levels of expectation on item and source memory while considering the impact of stimulus emotionality. The experiment began with a phase dedicated to learning the rules. In the subsequent study phase, negative and neutral words were manipulated as expected, no expectation, and unexpected, based on these rules. This was followed by tasks focused on item and source memory. The study found that there was a "U-shape" relationship between expectation and item memory. Additionally, the study revealed the distinct impacts of expectation on item and source memory. When it came to item memory, both expected and unexpected words were better remembered than those with no expectations. In source memory, expected words showed memory inferiority for expectation-irrelevant source information, but an advantage for expectation-relevant source information. Stimulus emotionality modulated the effect of expectation on both item and source memory. Our findings provide behavioral evidence for the schema-linked interactions between medial prefrontal and medial temporal regions (SLIMM) theory, which proposes that congruent and incongruent events enhance memory through different brain regions. The different patterns between item and source memory also support dual-process models. Moreover, we speculate that processing events with varying levels of emotionality may undermine the impact of expectation, as implied by other neural investigations.

Behavioral, neurological, and psychiatric frailty of autobiographical memory

Autobiographical-episodic memory is considered to be the most complex of the five long-term memory systems. It is autonoetic, which means, self-reflective, relies on emotional colorization, and needs the features of place and time; it allows mental time traveling. Compared to the other four long-term memory systems-procedural memory, priming, perceptual, and semantic memory-it develops the latest in phylogeny and ontogeny, and is the most vulnerable of the five systems, being easily impaired by brain damage and psychiatric disorders. Furthermore, it is characterized by its fragility and proneness to distortion due to environmental influences and subsequent information. On the brain level, a distinction has to be made between memory encoding and consolidating, memory storage, and memory retrieval. For encoding, structures of the limbic system, with the hippocampus in its center, are crucial, for storage of widespread cortical networks, and for retrieval again a distributed recollection network, in which the prefrontal cortex plays a crucial role, is engaged. Brain damage and psychiatric diseases can lead to what is called "focal retrograde amnesia." In this context, the clinical picture of dissociative or functional or psychogenic amnesia is central, as it may result in autobiographical-emotional amnesia of the total past with the consequence of an impairment of the self as well. The social environment therefore can have a major impact on the brain and on autobiographical-episodic memory processing. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory.

The Acute Effects of Psychoactive Drugs on Emotional Episodic Memory Encoding, Consolidation, and Retrieval

Psychoactive drugs modulate learning and emotional processes in ways that could impact their recreational and medical use. Recent work has revealed how drugs impact different stages of processing emotional episodic memories, specifically encoding (forming memories), consolidation (stabilizing memories), and retrieval (accessing memories). Drugs administered before encoding may preferentially impair (e.g., GABA_A sedatives including alcohol and benzodiazepines, Δ⁹-tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, ketamine), enhance (e.g., dextroamphetamine and dextromethamphetamine), or both impair and enhance (i.e., ±3,4-methylenedioxymethylamphetamine or MDMA) emotionally negative and positive compared to neutral memories. GABA_A sedatives administered immediately post-encoding (during consolidation) can preferentially enhance emotional memories, though this selectivity may decline or even reverse (i.e., preferential enhancement of neutral memories) as the delay between encoding and retrieval increases. Finally, retrieving memories under the effects of THC, dextroamphetamine, MDMA, and perhaps GABA_A sedatives distorts memory, with potentially greater selectively for emotional (especially positive) memories. We review these effects, propose neural mechanisms, discuss methodological considerations for future work, and speculate how drug effects on emotional episodic memory may contribute to drug use and abuse.

Abnormal evidence accumulation underlies the positive memory deficit in depression

Healthy adults show better memory for low-arousal positive versus negative stimuli, but depression compromises this positive memory advantage. Existing studies are limited by small samples or analyses that provide limited insight into underlying mechanisms. Our study addresses these concerns by using a multistaged analysis, including diffusion modeling, to identify precise psychological processes underlying the positive memory advantage and its disruption by depression in a large sample. A total of 1,358 participants completed the BDI-II (Beck et al., 1996) and an emotional memory task. At encoding, participants judged whether positive and negative words were positive or self-descriptive. After a free recall test, participants viewed an equal mix of studied and unstudied words and judged whether each was "old" or "new"; if judged "old," they indicated whether the study source was a valence or self-reference judgment. We replicate the positive memory advantage and its decrease in depression in recall, recognition, and source accuracy. The hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM; Wiecki et al., 2013) revealed that higher BDI-II scores are associated with more efficient evidence accumulation for negative words in the recognition and source memory tasks. By contrast, evidence accumulation for positive words is unaffected by BDI-II during the recognition task but becomes less efficient with increased BDI-II during the source memory task. In conclusion, in a well-controlled design with a large sample, we find that depression reduces the positive memory advantage. HDDM analyses suggest that this reflects differential effects of depression on the speed of evidence accumulation during the retrieval of positive versus negative memories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Experience of memory: transfer of the motor feeling of fluency linked to our interaction with the environment

In the field of memory, it is now admitted that an experience of memory is not only the consequence of the activation of a precise content, but also results from an inference associated with the transfer of the manner in which the process was carried out (i.e., fluency) in addition to the transfer of the process itself. The aim of this work was to show that experience of memory is also associated with the fluency that is due to the transfer of a processing carried out in our past interactions with our environment, independently the fluency associated with the stimulus in progress. First, participants performed a perceptual discrimination task (geometric shapes: circle or square) that involves a fluent or a non-fluent gesture to respond. Motor fluency vs. non-fluency was implicitly associated with the colour of the geometric shapes. Second, participants had to perform a classical memory recognition task. During the recognition phase, items appeared either with the colour associated with motor fluency or with the colour associated with motor non-fluency. We used a Go-NoGo task to avoid having a confused factor (response space). Results show that items were better recognised with a colour associated with motor fluency than with a colour associated with non-motor fluency. These findings support the idea that an experience of memory is also associated with the transfer of the motor feeling of fluency linked to our past interactions with the environment.

Patterns of episodic content and specificity predicting subjective memory vividness

The ability to remember and internally represent events is often accompanied by a subjective sense of "vividness". Vividness measures are frequently used to evaluate the experience of remembering and imagining events, yet little research has considered the objective attributes of event memories that underlie this subjective judgment, and individual differences in this mapping. Here, we tested how the content and specificity of event memories support subjectively vivid recollection. Over three experiments, participants encoded events containing a theme word and three distinct elements - a person, a place, and an object. In a memory test, memory for event elements was assessed at two levels of specificity - semantic gist (names) and perceptual details (lure discrimination). We found a strong correspondence between memory vividness and memory for gist information that did not vary by which elements were contained in memory. There was a smaller, additive benefit of remembering specific perceptual details on vividness, which, in one study, was driven by memory for place details. Moreover, we found individual differences in the relationship between memory vividness and objective memory attributes primarily along the specificity dimension, such that one cluster of participants used perceptual detail to inform memory vividness whereas another cluster was more driven by gist information. Therefore, while gist memory appears to drive vividness on average, there were idiosyncrasies in this pattern across participants. When assessing subjective ratings of memory and imagination, research should consider how these ratings map onto objective memory attributes in the context of their study design and population.

The contribution of the left precuneus to emotion memory in migraine without aura patients

Background

The impact of migraine without aura (MWoA) on cognitive function remains controversial, especially given the sparse literature on emotional memory.

Methods

Twenty seven MWoA patients and 25 healthy controls (HCs) were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. Emotional memory behavior was evaluated by combining incidental encoding with intentional encoding of five emotional categories of visual stimulus [positive valence + high arousal (PH), negative valence + high arousal (NH), positive valence + low arousal (PL), negative valence + low arousal (NL), and neutral (N)]. The recollection performance (Pr) was measured and compared. Then, the neural relevance was explored by correlating the Pr with gray matter volume (GMV) and resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) based on structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Results

No significant differences in recollection performance or emotional enhancement of memory effect were observed. However, MWoA patients were more sensitive to the valence and arousal of emotional stimuli under incidental encoding. Significantly, the Pr-PH under incidental encoding and Pr-PL under intentional encoding were negatively correlated with the GMV of the left precuneus, and the rs-FC between the left precuneus and putamen was positively correlated with Pr-PL under intentional encoding in MWoA patients.

Conclusion

Our study demonstrated the tendency for the influence of migraine on emotional memory and revealed the left precuneus as a critical contributor to recollection performance, providing novel insights for understanding emotional memory and its neural mechanisms in MWoA patients.

The power of negative and positive episodic memories

The power of episodic memories is that they bring a past moment into the present, providing opportunities for us to recall details of the experiences, reframe or update the memory, and use the retrieved information to guide our decisions. In these regards, negative and positive memories can be especially powerful: Life’s highs and lows are disproportionately represented in memory, and when they are retrieved, they often impact our current mood and thoughts and influence various forms of behavior. Research rooted in neuroscience and cognitive psychology has historically focused on memory for negative emotional content. Yet the study of autobiographical memories has highlighted the importance of positive emotional memories, and more recently, cognitive neuroscience methods have begun to clarify why positive memories may show powerful relations to mental wellbeing. Here, we review the models that have been proposed to explain why emotional memories are long-lasting (durable) and likely to be retrieved (accessible), describing how in overlapping—but distinctly separable—ways, positive and negative memories can be easier to retrieve, and more likely to influence behavior. We end by identifying potential implications of this literature for broader topics related to mental wellbeing, education, and workplace environments.

What predicts climate change activism?: An examination of how depressive symptoms, climate change distress, and social norms are associated with climate change activism

BACKGROUND

The current and future harms caused by climate change are highly distressing. Different theoretical models suggest diverse impacts of distress on behavior. We examined how psychological distress, climate change distress, and social norms may foster or impede climate change activism.

METHODS

As part of an ongoing online longitudinal study in the US beginning in March 2020, respondents were assessed on their depressive symptoms (CES-D 10), climate change distress, climate change mitigation social norms, and six outcomes of the climate change activism behaviors of writing letters, e-mailing, or phoning government officials; voting for candidates who support measures to reduce climate change; signing petitions; volunteering with organizations; donating money to organizations; and attending protests.

RESULTS

Of the 775 respondents, 53% were female, 72% white, 12% Black, 7% Hispanic, and 6% Asian. Climate change social norms predicted all six climate change actions in the bivariate and multivariable cross-sectional logistic regression models. A similar finding was observed with the brief climate change distress scale (BCCDS), except it was not associated with volunteering in the multivariable model. Depressive symptoms were associated with greater odds of contacting government officials and signing petitions in the bivariate models but did not retain significance in the multivariable models. Longitudinal models indicated a weak association between depressive symptoms and climate change activism.

CONCLUSIONS

Climate change distress and social norms are positively associated with climate change activism. Although climate change distress may not usually impede climate change activism, organizations addressing climate change should consider providing social support to members and assisting those with high levels of psychological and climate change distress. Social norms around climate change activism should be fostered.

Distinct stress-related changes in intrinsic amygdala connectivity predict subsequent positive and negative memory performance

Experiencing stress before an event can influence how that event is later remembered. In the current study, we examine how individual differences in one's physiological response to a stressor are related to changes to underlying brain states and memory performance. Specifically, we examined how changes in intrinsic amygdala connectivity relate to positive and negative memory performance as a function of stress response, defined as a change in cortisol. Twenty-five participants underwent a social stressor before an incidental emotional memory encoding task. Cortisol samples were obtained before and after the stressor to measure individual differences in stress response. Three resting state scans (pre-stressor, post-stressor/pre-encoding and post-encoding) were conducted to evaluate pre- to post-stressor and pre- to post-encoding changes to intrinsic amygdala connectivity. Analyses examined relations between greater cortisol changes and connectivity changes. Greater cortisol increases were associated with a greater decrease in prefrontal-amygdala connectivity following the stressor and a reversal in the relation between prefrontal-amygdala connectivity and negative vs. positive memory performance. Greater cortisol increases were also associated with a greater increase in amygdala connectivity with a number of posterior sensory regions following encoding. Consistent with prior findings in non-stressed individuals, pre- to post-encoding increases in amygdala-posterior connectivity were associated with greater negative relative to positive memory performance, although this was specific to lateral rather than medial posterior regions and to participants with the greatest cortisol changes. These findings suggest that stress response is associated with changes in intrinsic connectivity that have downstream effects on the valence of remembered emotional content.

Investigating the effects of sleep and sleep loss on the different stages of episodic emotional memory: A narrative review and guide to the future

For two decades, sleep has been touted as one of the primary drivers for the encoding, consolidation, retention, and retrieval of episodic emotional memory. Recently, however, sleep’s role in emotional memory processing has received renewed scrutiny as meta-analyses and reviews have indicated that sleep may only contribute a small effect that hinges on the content or context of the learning and retrieval episodes. On the one hand, the strong perception of sleep’s importance in maintaining memory for emotional events may have been exacerbated by publication bias phenomena, such as the “winner’s curse” and “file drawer problem.” On the other hand, it is plausible that there are sets of circumstances that lead to consistent and reliable effects of sleep on emotional memory; these circumstances may depend on factors such as the placement and quality of sleep relative to the emotional experience, the content and context of the emotional experience, and the probes and strategies used to assess memory at retrieval. Here, we review the literature on how sleep (and sleep loss) influences each stage of emotional episodic memory. Specifically, we have separated previous work based on the placement of sleep and sleep loss in relation to the different stages of emotional memory processing: (1) prior to encoding, (2) immediately following encoding during early consolidation, (3) during extended consolidation, separated from initial learning, (4) just prior to retrieval, and (5) post-retrieval as memories may be restructured and reconsolidated. The goals of this review are three-fold: (1) examine phases of emotional memory that sleep may influence to a greater or lesser degree, (2) explicitly identify problematic overlaps in traditional sleep–wake study designs that are preventing the ability to better disentangle the potential role of sleep in the different stages of emotional memory processing, and (3) highlight areas for future research by identifying the stages of emotional memory processing in which the effect of sleep and sleep loss remains under-investigated. Here, we begin the task of better understanding the contexts and factors that influence the relationship between sleep and emotional memory processing and aim to be a valuable resource to facilitate hypothesis generation and promote important future research.

Emotional valence and the types of information provided by children in forensic interviews

BACKGROUND

Emotions can powerfully affect memory retrieval although this effect has seldom been studied in everyday contexts.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to explore the association between children's verbal emotional expressions and the type of information reported during forensic interviews.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

The sample included 198 interviews with 4- to 14-year-old (M = 9.36, SD = 2.37) alleged victims of repeated physical abuse perpetrated by family members conducted using the Revised NICHD Protocol which emphasizes a supportive interviewing style.

METHODS

Interview videos were transcribed and each conversational turn was coded to reflect the amount and type of children's verbal emotional expressions, forensic information provided, interviewers' demeanor, and type of question asked.

RESULTS

The verbal expression of negative emotions was positively associated with the production of more central details (β = 0.29, SE = 0.05, p < 0.001) and peripheral details (β = 0.66, SE = 0.07, p < 0.001), while the verbal expression of positive emotions was correlated with peripheral details (β = 0.29, SE = 0.15, p = 0.047). The verbal expression of negative emotions was associated with the production of more specific details (β = 0.73, SE = 0.06, p < 0.001]) and less generic information (β = -0.39, SE = 0.18, p = 0.029) whereas positive emotions were associated only with increased specific information (β = 0.28, SE = 0.12, p = 0.025).

CONCLUSIONS

These findings highlight how emotional expression, especially of negative emotions, enhances the quantity and quality of children's reports in forensic contexts.

Representing the Good and Bad: fMRI signatures during the encoding of multisensory positive, negative, and neutral events

Few studies have examined how multisensory emotional experiences are processed and encoded into memory. Here, we aimed to determine whether, at encoding, activity within functionally-defined visual- and auditory-processing brain regions discriminated the emotional category (i.e., positive, negative, or neutral) of the multisensory (audio-visual) events. Participants incidentally encoded positive, negative, and neutral multisensory stimuli during event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Following a 3-h post-encoding delay, their memory for studied stimuli was tested, allowing us to identify emotion-category-specific subsequent-memory effects focusing on medial temporal lobe regions (i.e., amygdala, hippocampus) and visual- and auditory-processing regions. We used a combination of univariate and multivoxel pattern fMRI analyses (MVPA) to examine emotion-category-specificity in mean activity levels and neural patterning, respectively. Univariate analyses revealed many more visual regions that showed negative-category-specificity relative to positive-category-specificity, and auditory regions only showed negative-category-specificity. These results suggest that negative emotion is more closely tied to information contained within sensory regions, a conclusion that was supported by the MVPA analyses. Functional connectivity analyses further revealed that the visual amplification of category-selective processing is driven, in part, by mean signal from the amygdala. Interestingly, while stronger representations in visuo-auditory regions were related to subsequent-memory for neutral multisensory stimuli, they were related to subsequent-forgetting of positive and negative stimuli. Neural patterning in the hippocampus and amygdala were related to memory for negative multisensory stimuli. These results provide new evidence that negative emotional stimuli are processed with increased engagement of visuosensory regions, but that this sensory engagement-that generalizes across the entire emotion category-is not the type of sensory encoding that is most beneficial for later retrieval.

The impact of perceived emotions on toddlers' word learning

Others' emotional expressions affect individuals' attention allocation in social interactions, which are integral to the process of word learning. However, the impact of perceived emotions on word learning is not well understood. Two eye-tracking experiments investigated 78 British toddlers' (37 girls) of 29- to 31-month-old retention of novel label-object and emotion-object associations after hearing labels presented in neutral, positive, and negative affect in a referent selection task. Overall, toddlers learned novel label-object associations regardless of the affect associated with objects but showed an attentional bias toward negative objects especially when emotional cues were presented (d = 0.95), suggesting that identifying the referent to a label is a competitive process between retrieval of the learned label-object association and the emotional valence of distractors.

Relating emotional variables to recognition memory performance: a large-scale re-analysis of megastudy data

The megastudy paradigm has become an important tool for cognitive science. One advantage to the megastudy is that existing data can be reanalysed in light of novel hypotheses. In the current study, recognition memory data for 4819 words were obtained. Multiple regression analyses assessed the influence of emotional variables on recognition memory performance (i.e., hits minus false alarm rates H-FAs) for the words. The predictor variables included valence, arousal, extremity of valence (the degree of negative or positive meaning), context valence (the degree to which a word typically appears in positive or negative contexts), context arousal (how emotionally reactive are contexts in which the word appears), and context extremity of valence (the degree of this typical emotional context). This study extended earlier work by implementing more thorough controls, maximising the number of words, assessing a more comprehensive set of emotional variables, and introducing the context extremity of valence variable. We found extremity of valence, context extremity of valence, context valence, and context arousal all were significant predictors of H-FAs. We interpret the results in terms of the dual-coding theory and hub and spoke model. We also explain how single-process models could accommodate the results in terms of context diversity.

Medial prefrontal and occipito-temporal activity at encoding determines enhanced recognition of threatening faces after 1.5 years

Studies demonstrated that faces with threatening emotional expressions are better remembered than non-threatening faces. However, whether this memory advantage persists over years and which neural systems underlie such an effect remains unknown. Here, we employed an individual difference approach to examine whether the neural activity during incidental encoding was associated with differential recognition of faces with emotional expressions (angry, fearful, happy, sad and neutral) after a retention interval of > 1.5 years (N = 89). Behaviorally, we found a better recognition for threatening (angry, fearful) versus non-threatening (happy and neutral) faces after a delay of > 1.5 years, which was driven by forgetting of non-threatening faces compared with immediate recognition after encoding. Multivariate principal component analysis (PCA) on the behavioral responses further confirmed the discriminative recognition performance between threatening and non-threatening faces. A voxel-wise whole-brain analysis on the concomitantly acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data during incidental encoding revealed that neural activity in bilateral inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) and ventromedial prefrontal/orbitofrontal cortex (vmPFC/OFC) was associated with the individual differences in the discriminative emotional face recognition performance measured by an innovative behavioral pattern similarity analysis (BPSA). The left fusiform face area (FFA) was additionally determined using a regionally focused analysis. Overall, the present study provides evidence that threatening facial expressions lead to persistent face recognition over periods of > 1.5 years, and that differential encoding-related activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and occipito-temporal cortex may underlie this effect.

Distinct medial-tempora lobe mechanisms of encoding and amygdala-mediated memory reinstatement for disgust and fear

Current models of episodic memory posit that retrieval involves the reenactment of encoding processes. Recent evidence has shown that this reinstatement process - indexed by subsequent encoding-retrieval similarity of brain activity patterns - is related to the activity in the hippocampus during encoding. However, we tend to re-experience emotional events in memory more richly than dull events. The role of amygdala - a critical hub of emotion processing - in reinstatement of emotional events was poorly understood. To investigate it, we leveraged a previously overlooked divergence in the role of amygdala in memory modulation by distinct emotions - disgust and fear. Here we used a novel paradigm in which participants encoded complex events (word pairs) and their memory was tested after 3 weeks, both phases during fMRI scanning. Using representational similarity analysis and univariate analyses, we show that the strength of amygdala activation during encoding was correlated with memory reinstatement of individual event representations in emotion-specific regions. Critically, amygdala modulated reinstatement more for disgust than fear. This was in line with other differences observed at the level of memory performance and neural mechanisms of encoding. Specifically, amygdala and perirhinal cortex were more involved during encoding of disgust-related events, whereas hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus during encoding of fear-related events. Together, these findings shed a new light on the role of the amygdala and medial temporal lobe regions in encoding and reinstatement of specific emotional memories.

Detecting Time Concept Competence in Children with Autism Spectrum and Attention Disorders

The importance of time concept in human existence is "ancient history" celebrated in the biblical book Ecclesiastes. Indeed, our time-sensitive mechanisms are literally carved into our biology and neurology on a molecular level, gifting us with neural clocks. However, time in human consciousness is not the time indicated by physical clocks: time is a subjective reality in our psychological makeup due to the nature of the temporal neural mechanisms and unique properties of physical time. Nonetheless, subjective time requires anchoring to physical time which permeates our language, endeavors, and entire existence, a process hinging on time-related skills such as estimates and measures of passage and duration of time. Moreover, accurate time reading, a critical adaptive life-skill, is imperative for effective function in all societal activities. Because it embodies the complexity of the time construct, it is central to instruction of time concept in primary education. It is often measured in children by clock drawings, a cognitive integrative skill with errors pointing to neuroanatomical differences impacting the integrity of executive function. Time competence in children with atypical neurobiological development and high prevalence, as in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and attention disorders (ADHD), is often compromised, calling for investigation of its function. This thematic review article aims to: 1) discuss the complexity of time concept and its underlying bio-neurological mechanisms, 2) elucidate difficulties children with ASD and those with ADHD exhibit in temporal development, and 3) demonstrate the use of a set of clinical tools in uncovering temporal competence and ecological executive function in two children with ASD, and a child with ADHD, using a clock drawing task and error analyses; children's time knowledge questionnaire; a behavior rating parent questionnaire examining ecological executive function, and parent open-ended questions related to their children's time difficulties. A discussion, directions, and a take-home message round out the article.

How Families Make Their Way Into Your Heart: Exploring the Associations Between Daily Experiences Involving Family Members and Cardiovascular Health

BACKGROUND

Cardiovascular disease is a critical public health issue and a growing body of literature on relationships and health point to individuals' interactions and involvement with family members as significant correlates of cardiovascular outcomes. However, less is known about the implications of daily encounters with family members on cardiovascular health outcomes and how the associations vary across adulthood.

PURPOSE

The aims of this study were to examine the associations of positive and negative daily experiences with family members with comprehensive measures of cardiovascular health and to further explore how age moderates these associations.

METHODS

This study used data from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) II and MIDUS Refresher. The sample was composed of respondents who participated in two subprojects of MIDUS, namely the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE) and Biomarker Project (N = 1,312). Indices of cardiovascular health included inflammatory markers, autonomic functioning, and Life's Simple 7 scores.

RESULTS

Results showed that the associations between daily family experiences and cardiovascular outcomes differed by age. Having more daily negative experiences with family members was associated with better cardiovascular health outcomes among young adults and worse cardiovascular outcomes among older adults. Having more daily positive experiences was also associated with lower heart rate variability for older adults.

CONCLUSIONS

Results revealed that contrary to the general assumption that negative experiences have health-damaging effects, frequent involvement with family members in daily life, even negative ones, may be indicative of active engagement in life that could be health promoting for younger adults.

When non-salient information becomes salient in conversational memory: Collaboration shapes the effects of emotion and self-production

People's memory of what was said and who said what during dialogue plays a central role in mutual comprehension and subsequent adaptation. This article outlines that well-established effects in conversational memory such as the self-production and the emotional effects actually depend on the nature of the interaction. We specifically focus on the impact of the collaborative nature of the interaction, comparing participants' conversational memory in non-collaborative and collaborative interactive settings involving interactions between two people (i.e., dialogue). The findings reveal that the amplitude of these conversational memory effects depends on the collaborative vs. non-collaborative nature of the interaction. The effects are attenuated when people have the opportunity to collaborate because information that remained non-salient in the non-collaborative condition (neutral and partner-produced words) became salient in the collaborative condition to a level similar to otherwise salient information (emotional and self-produced words). We highlight the importance of these findings in the study of dialogue and conversational memory.

A matter of time: how does emotion influence temporal aspects of remembering?

Spatiotemporal context is an intrinsic aspect of episodic memory. Although a large literature has demonstrated that emotion enhances episodic memory, less research has considered whether and how emotion affects memory for the timing of an experience, despite theoretical and practical importance. In this review, we bridge three heavily researched cognitive domains - memory, emotion, and time - by discussing findings from a burgeoning literature on their intersection. We identify and review two broad ways in which memory for time has been conceptualised in the emotional memory literature, namely (1) memory for relative aspects of event timing ("when" an event detail occurred), which includes studies of temporal-order and source memory; and (2) memory for the time that elapsed during an event ("how long"), which includes studies of retrospective duration estimation. Emerging trends demonstrate that although temporal-order memory can be impaired or enhanced by emotion depending on study demands, temporal source memory, instead, is usually enhanced. Studies of duration memory show that the remembered duration of negative experiences is dilated, but it is less clear how duration memory is affected for positive events. These findings are considered under the lens of broader emotional memory literature theories, and directions for future research are proposed.

DreamSenseMemory - a Gestalt-based dream-work approach embracing all our senses

Gestalt therapists believe that their task is to help their clients to experience repressed, ambivalent, and unpleasant things in order to accept and implement them in their whole self. To implement those ‘things’, those elements of the self, they need to be uncovered first, which is a process that often is achieved by dream work, as messages from the unconscious that are stuck in our dreams can be revealed by certain Gestalt-therapy methods. The method in focus is the newly developed DreamSenseMemory technique which is based on neurological findings on how the senses at play influence memory processing. Dream work with the DreamSenseMemory method has the advantage that by using this method on a regular basis, dream content will not only be remembered more often but also in more detail. Thus, effectively supporting dream work and its process of understanding the message of the unconscious, accepting the elements withing and implementing them in the self.

Strategic encoding and enhanced memory for positive value-location associations

People often need to remember the location of important objects or events, and also to remember locations that are associated with negative objects. In the current study, we examined how both positive and negative items might be selectively remembered in the visuospatial domain. Participants studied number-items ranging from -25 to +25 indicating point values in a grid display and were instructed to maximize their score (a summation of correctly remembered positive and negative information; incorrectly placed negative items resulted in a subtraction from the overall score). Items were presented in a sequential, simultaneous (Experiment 1), or self-regulated format (Experiment 2) where participants controlled which items to study and the length of study time per item. In Experiment 1, participants selectively recalled high-magnitude over low-magnitude items, but also displayed a positivity preference in memory. In Experiment 2, we were able to determine whether this positivity preference was a result of bottom-up, automatic, or top-down strategic processes. Results indicated that participants explicitly chose to study positive items more frequently and for more total time relative to negative items, suggesting a deliberate strategy to focus on positive information. This bias for highly positive information suggests an overt points-gained approach, as opposed to a loss-aversion approach, to remembering value in the visuospatial domain.

Infective Messages: Definitions, Processes, and Implications for Trauma, Identities, Internal Conflicts, Psychotherapy, and Research

BACKGROUND

Throughout life, individuals are bombarded by countless emotion-generating messages. Certain of these messages, for example, some insults, admonitions, rejections, challenges, or insightful declarations, can be viewed as "infective." Infective messages shock, puncture, adhere, disturb, and generate discernable host responses that assimilate, accommodate, or repel the intruding messages. Messages originating in one's own mind can stimulate psychological equivalents of autoimmune responses. Sometimes, these messages produce enduring psychological changes. Infective messages may traumatize, organize, or therapize. The aims of this article are to consider how infective messages a) relate to their messengers (vectors), structural characteristics, and recipient (host) factors; b) might contribute to trauma, personal identity formation, psychological conflicts, and emotional self-regulatory and cognitive heuristics; c) might inform the conduct of psychotherapy; and d) suggest future research.

METHODS

Clinical observations were augmented with selective literature reviews. These sources contributed to perspectives regarding how certain messages might become infective; contribute to trauma, complex aspects of identity formation, and inner conflict; and inform the conduct of psychotherapy.

RESULTS

Infective messages are commonly characterized by short, cogent communications emanating from credible sources that fall on vulnerable recipients' receptive, dispositional feeling states. These infective stimuli trigger reactive and defensive emotions and associated behaviors reflecting responses to significant threats or benefits relative to the individual's deepest needs, motivations, and values. Defensive overreactions may occur in response to messages to which individuals have been previously sensitized. Infective message contents appear to assimilate into constantly evolving, dynamic autobiographical brain maps consisting of highly specific neuronal networks that range from the brainstem through limbic structures to multiple cortical areas. Autobiographical maps built from message-injected contents may transform, akin to the incorporation of retroviruses or prions, to encode personal identities as aspects of the self. Contrasting maps may exist semi-independently of one another, continuously evolving, interacting, combining, dividing, conflicting, and contending with one another for attention. Achieving attentional awareness, such maps help structure how individuals conceptualize and communicate about their encoded traumas, diverse identities, and the conflicts among them.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

During psychotherapy, aftereffects of traumatizing infective messages might be detoxified by deconstructing, desensitizing, and processing messages' precise words and emotional envelopes in relation to contexts in which they were delivered, and the individual's inner dispositions at moments of impact. Carefully crafted, timely interpretations can be therapeutically infective, generating enduring positive impacts. Future studies using an assortment of approaches can test these perspectives.

Post-retrieval Distortions of Self-Referential Negative Memory: Valence Consistency Enhances Gist-Directed False, While Non-negative Interference Generates More Intrusive Updates

According to the theory of reconsolidation, the contents of an original memory can be updated after reactivation with subsequent new learnings. However, there seems to be a lack of an appropriate behavioral paradigm to study the reconsolidation of explicit self-related memory, which is of great significance to further explore its cognitive neural mechanism in the future. In two separate experiments, we adapted a trial-by-trial interfering paradigm with a self-episodic simulation process and investigated (1) whether it is possible to reconsolidate negative memories under the new behavioral paradigm and (2) how the emotional valence of post-retrieval interference material affects the reconsolidation of negative memories. The results showed that the negative memories under trial-by-trial self-simulation can be degraded and updated via post-retrieval interference processes. Individuals whose original memories were reactivated by initial background cues and who were then presented with new interference situations were less able to recall original scenes and showed more memory intrusions on these scenes than those who had experienced new learning without reactivation or only reactivation without interference. Furthermore, the extent and manner of memory change/updating were greatly influenced by the characteristics of interference information. For memories with negative valences, new learning materials with the same valence produced superior interference effects in the form of lower correct recalls and more integrated false; whereas the neutral interference materials can cause more memory intrusion. Post-retrieval memory distortions of negative self-memory may underlie different functional mechanisms.

Emotional Nuance Enhances Verbatim Retention of Written Materials

Recent studies have demonstrated that details of verbal material are retained in memory. Further, converging evidence points to a memory-enhancing effect of emotion such that memory for emotional events is stronger than memory for neutral events. Building upon this work, it appears likely that verbatim sentence forms will be remembered better when tinged with emotional nuance. Most previous studies have focused on single words. The current study examines the role of emotional nuance in the verbatim retention of longer sentences in written material. In this study, participants silently read transcriptions of spontaneous narratives, half of which had been delivered within a context of emotional expression and the other half with neutral expression. Transcripts were taken from selected narratives that received the highest, most extreme ratings, neutral or emotional. Participants identified written excerpts in a yes/no recognition test. Results revealed that participants' verbatim memory was significantly greater for excerpts from emotionally nuanced narratives than from neutral narratives. It is concluded that the narratives, pre-rated as emotional or neutral, drove this effect of emotion on verbatim retention. These findings expand a growing body of evidence for a role of emotion in memory, and lend support to episodic theories of language and the constructionist account.

Emotional Arousal and Valence Jointly Modulate the Auditory Response: A 40-Hz ASSR Study

Emotion is defined as a response to external stimuli and internal mental representations. It has been characterized as a multidimensional concept, primarily comprising two dimensions: valence and arousal. Existing studies have demonstrated that emotional experience exerts a powerful impact on auditory processing in terms of valence. However, it has also been shown that while negative emotion can improve auditory perception in healthy subjects, patients with depression show deficits in auditory perception. We thus speculated that both arousal and valence jointly modulate auditory perception. To examine the emotion-driven effects on the auditory response, we induced positive, negative, and neutral emotional states in healthy subjects and collected auditory steady-state response (ASSR) evoked by a 40-Hz chirp sound. We calculated peak-to-peak amplitude (PPA) and event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) of evoked ASSRs and observed that the positive emotions significantly enhanced brain responses to auditory stimuli (p < 0.001), but that ASSRs in a negative state were not significantly enhanced compared with the neutral state. Subsequently, regression analysis showed a significant positive multiple linear relationship between the PPA and ratings of two emotional dimensions, indicating that arousal and valence jointly regulated the auditory cortex's synchronous oscillation, rather than the valence in isolation, offering the potential to clarify the conflicting results surrounding the role of negative emotions in auditory responses. Because depression is generally characterized by low arousal and low valence in actual life, whereas the negative emotion evoked under laboratory conditions is always with low valence but high arousal.

Effects of two different emotion-inducing methods on the emotional memory of non-clinically depressed individuals

In the study of emotional memory bias in depressed individuals, most previous studies have used emotional materials, but there were significant differences in the effects of different emotion-inducing methods on face memory. In the present study, two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of different emotion-inducing methods on memory between healthy participants and non-clinically depressed participants. The results from experiment 1 showed that when feedback was used as induction, the memory performance of the non-clinical depression group was significantly higher than that of the healthy group under the condition of negative feedback. Under positive and neutral feedback, there were no significant differences between the two groups. In experiment 2, when emotional materials were used as a mode of induction, no significantly difference in each emotional condition between the healthy and depressed groups was found. The results of the present study show that different methods of emotional induction have different effects on depressed participants. Compared with the emotion induced by the emotional material, the non-clinical depressed participants had a better memory effect induced by negative emotional events.

The influence of emotional narrative content on the self-reference effect in memory

This study investigated how emotional language usage impacts self-referential effects in memory in healthy older adults and individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). To heighten self-focus, 37 healthy older adults and 22 aMCI participants narrated autobiographical memories and then encoded words using a self-referencing or a semantic strategy. We were interested in how narrating autobiographical memories impacted subsequent memory. We probed narrative language usage with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count text analysis program, testing the degree to which language from the narrated autobiographical memories contain emotional (positive and negative) words that predicted the self-reference effect across groups. Results indicated that higher levels of positive emotional language were related to larger self-reference effects in memory. In conclusion, narrating autobiographical memories using emotional language influenced the effectiveness of self-referencing as a memory strategy for both healthy older adults and aMCI participants.

Divided attention at encoding or retrieval interferes with emotionally enhanced memory for words

Emotional information is typically better remembered than neutral information. We asked whether emotional, compared to neutral, words were less vulnerable to the detrimental effects of divided attention. In two experiments, undergraduate students intentionally encoded words of intermixed valence (neutral, negative, or positive) and arousal (neutral, high, or low). Following a filled delay, memory was assessed with a free recall test. In Experiment 1, participants encoded visually-presented words under either full attention (FA; no distracting task) or divided attention (DA; concurrently making animacy decisions to auditorily-presented distractor words) in a counterbalanced, within-subjects design. As expected following FA at encoding, recall was significantly enhanced for negative compared to neutral words. Following DA at encoding, recall was significantly impaired across all valences. Critically, DA at encoding also eliminated the memory benefit for negative information: recall of negative words was no longer significantly different from neutral or positive words. In Experiment 2, we manipulated attention at retrieval rather than encoding. Remarkably, results from Experiment 1 were replicated: DA eliminated the well-known emotionality boost for negative words. In both experiments, memory for positive words did not significantly differ from neutral. Findings suggest that DA during either encoding or retrieval can interfere with the specific mechanisms by which negative emotion typically improves memory.

Strong correspondence between prefrontal and visual representations during emotional perception

Emotion is thought to cause focal enhancement or distortion of certain components of memory, indicating a complex property of emotional modulation on memory rather than simple enhancement. However, the neural basis for detailed modulation of emotional memory contents has remained unclear. Here has been shown that the information processing of the prefrontal cortex differentially affects sensory representations during experience of emotional information compared with neutral information, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It was found that during perception of emotional pictures, information representation in primary visual cortex (V1) significantly corresponded with the representations in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). This correspondence was not observed for neutral pictures. Furthermore, participants with greater correspondence between visual and prefrontal representations showed better memory for high-level semantic components but not for low-level visual components of emotional stimuli. These results suggest that sensory representation during experience of emotional stimuli, compared with neutral stimuli, is more directly influenced by internally generated higher-order information from the prefrontal cortex.