Presenter(s): Melissa Adler—Human Physiology
Faculty Mentor(s): Dasa Zeithamova, Caitlin Bowman
Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation
Studies show that emotion enhances memory for individual items but weakens memory for associations between items . One explanation for this associative memory impairment is that emotional stimuli capture attention, causing enhanced encoding of the emotional item but encoding of the surrounding environment . This hypothesis generates the prediction that emotional information always impairs associative memory . Alternatively, it may be that emotion orients attention towards threats in the environment, thus suggesting anger and fear have different effects on memory for associated information . To adjudicate between these hypotheses, subjects studied sets of three images, consisting of two objects and a face with either a neutral, angry, or fearful expression . Subjects were later tested on their memory for the associations between the three items . Supporting our the first hypothesis, memory for both angry and fearful associations was worse than memory for neutral associations . Contrary to our the second hypothesis, there were no differences in memory for angry versus fearful associations . Thus, emotional information itself seems to capture attention, weakening memory for related information . If we understand the mechanisms of how negative emotion influences associative memory, we may discover methods of counteracting the impairment via various memory-improving techniques . This could lead to increased memory accuracy for emotional events and thus increased accuracy and reliability of eyewitness testimonies .