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Brain Imaging Investigation of the Memory-Enhancing Effect of Emotion
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Published on: May 4, 2011

Arousal-Enhanced Location Memory for Pictures.

Mara Mather1, Kathryn Nesmith

  • 1Mara Mather and Kathryn Nesmith, Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Journal of Memory and Language
|February 5, 2009
PubMed
Summary

Emotional arousal enhances memory for where pictures are located. This effect improves the binding of a picture to its spatial context without hindering memory for nearby items.

Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Memory Research

Background:

  • Emotional arousal influences memory.
  • The relationship between arousal and spatial memory binding is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether emotional arousal enhances the memory binding of pictures to their locations.
  • To determine if this effect is specific to the arousing item or affects nearby items.

Main Methods:

  • Four experiments used an incidental encoding task.
  • Participants viewed positive, negative, and neutral pictures.
  • Memory for picture locations was subsequently tested.

Main Results:

  • Arousal-enhanced location memory was observed for both positive and negative arousing pictures.

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  • This effect improved picture-location binding without negatively impacting the binding of nearby pictures.
  • The enhancement occurred regardless of the accuracy of picture recognition memory.

    • Conclusions:

    • Emotional arousal strengthens the memory binding between a picture's content and its spatial location.
    • This enhancement is specific to the arousing item and does not interfere with the memory of adjacent items.
    • Arousal's effect on memory binding is distinct from its effect on item recognition.