Bridging space and time in relational memory: enhanced integration of spatiotemporal contextual associations by...

Prior research has primarily investigated the effects of emotion on spatial and temporal associations separately. Here, we jointly examined the influence of negative arousal on both types of associations to provide a more comprehensive understanding of emotion's impact on episodic memory. During encoding, participants (N = 133) viewed a series of images involving dissociable foreground and background components and were encouraged to make temporal contextual associations between consecutive images. Subsequently, participants' relational memory (RM) was tested using a retrieval task that assessed: (1) subjective RM (recollection-based), (2) objective spatial RM (foreground-background matches), along with the link between subjective and objective RM accuracy (Double-Hit), and (3) temporal RM (sequential associations) and accuracy in the spatiotemporal associations (Triple-Hit). First, replicating and extending earlier evidence, emotion enhanced subjective recollection confirmed by objective spatial RM (Double-Hit). Second, we also present novel evidence that emotion enhances spatiotemporal integration - i.e. emotion enhanced subjective and spatial objective RM, while also upregulating associations with subsequent neutral information (Triple-Hit). These findings promote a broader understanding of emotion's impact on episodic memory and lay the foundation for developing interventions aimed at improving memory for contextual associations in healthy functioning and reducing memory decontextualization associated with PTSD and age-related cognitive decline.