Age, gender, and arousal in recognition of negative and neutral pictures 1 year later

Compared with nonarousing stimuli, arousing stimuli enhance memory performance. The most robust effects have been reported for negative stimuli, "the negativity effect," although a number of mediating factors prevent definitive conclusions, for example, age, gender, memory task, retention period, and alternative arousal measures. To clarify whether the negativity effect is robust across age, gender, and time, we studied incidental recognition of neutral and negative pictures from the International Affective Picture System (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1999) in healthy younger and older adults--women and men--after a 1-year retention interval. Memory performance was related to 2 arousal measures at encoding, skin conductance response (SCR), and intensity rating of unpleasantness. The results showed weaker overall memory performance for older adults compared with younger adults. The negativity effect on accuracy (d') was gender dependent and age independent. In contrast, the negativity effect on response bias (c) interacted with age, but not gender, being weaker for older adults. Despite significant differences in arousal (SCR and arousal rating) between negative and neutral pictures, the correlations between arousal measures and memory performance were weak. Controlling for age and gender, a small negative partial correlation was found between arousal ratings and accuracy. The results extend previous studies by relating long-term recognition to both age and gender as well as to arousal at encoding.