Negative emotion reduces associative memory not only in adults, but also in children

Age and emotion critically affect associative memory and, consequently, the integration of different elements into a holistic memory representation, termed "memory coherence." We examined the effect of both of these factors (emotion and age) simultaneously on associative memory and memory coherence in children and young adults. In Experiment 1, 6- to 7-year-olds (n = 22) and young adults (n = 28) and, in Experiment 2, 6- to 8-year-olds (n = 26), 9- to 11-year-olds (n = 29), and young adults (n = 30) learned events consisting of three elements (a face, a scene, and an object). Half of the events were negative, featuring sad faces, and the other half included neutral faces. Memory was tested across all associations for each event. The procedure of the two experiments was identical, but the encoding duration was reduced to 6 s in Experiment 2 (vs. 12 s in Experiment 1). In both experiments, emotion reduced associative memory in children as well as in adults. Crucially, all age groups except 6- to 7-year-olds showed coherent retrieval of both neutral and negative events, with the youngest group displaying disrupted memory coherence for emotional events, possibly due to stronger negative emotions. These findings suggest that emotion impairs associative memory already in children of a young age. In addition, our findings show a distinct pattern: Associative memory changes with age groups, while memory coherence remains stable. These results raise new questions about the affective and developmental components of human memory and provide valuable insights for clinical and educational settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).