Emotional stimuli exert parallel effects on attention and memory

Because emotional and neutral stimuli typically differ on non-emotional dimensions, it has been difficult to determine conclusively which factors underlie the ability of emotional stimuli to enhance immediate long-term memory. Here we induced arousal by varying participants' goals, a method tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition and emotion 2013-04, Vol.27 (3), p.530-538
Main Authors: Talmi, Deborah, Ziegler, Marilyne, Hawksworth, Jade, Lalani, Safina, Herman, C. Peter, Moscovitch, Morris
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activity levels. Psychomotricity
Adult
Affectivity. Emotion
Arousal
Attention
Biological and medical sciences
Divided attention
Emotion
Emotions
Female
Food
Free recall
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Goals
Human
Humans
Hunger
Induced
Learning. Memory
Male
Memory
Memory, Long-Term
Personality. Affectivity
Photic Stimulation
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychomotor Performance
Satiation
Vigilance. Attention. Sleep
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Summary:Because emotional and neutral stimuli typically differ on non-emotional dimensions, it has been difficult to determine conclusively which factors underlie the ability of emotional stimuli to enhance immediate long-term memory. Here we induced arousal by varying participants' goals, a method that removes many potential confounds between emotional and non-emotional items. Hungry and sated participants encoded food and clothing images under divided attention conditions. Sated participants attended to and recalled food and clothing images equivalently. Hungry participants performed worse on the concurrent tone-discrimination task when they viewed food relative to clothing images, suggesting enhanced attention to food images, and they recalled more food than clothing images. A follow-up regression analysis of the factors predicting memory for individual pictures revealed that food images had parallel effects on attention and memory in hungry participants, so that enhanced attention to food images did not predict their enhanced memory. We suggest that immediate long-term memory for food is enhanced in the hungry state because hunger leads to more distinctive processing of food images rendering them more accessible during retrieval.
ISSN:0269-9931
1464-0600
DOI:10.1080/02699931.2012.722527