Children's memory for emotional events: the importance of emotion-related retrieval cues

Preschool children's memory for real life emotion episodes was assessed by first having their parents generate descriptions of recent events where they had actually observed their children experience happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. The 77 preschool children, 42 boys and 33 girls, were then presented with their parents' recollection of each precipitating event and asked to recall everything they could remember about the emotion episode. Instructions for facilitating retrieval varied across four conditions. In the Control Condition, children were presented with a precipitating event and were asked to recall the entire episode, without being given any emotion cue. In the Emotion Label Condition, children were presented with a precipitating event, were asked to generate a verbal label(s) that corresponded to their emotional reaction to the event, and were asked to recall the entire episode. In the Emotion Face Condition, children generated a verbal label for their emotional reaction, made a face that corresponded to their emotional reaction, and were asked to recall the entire episode. In the Emotion Reinstatement Condition, children labeled their emotional reaction, made a face, and were then asked to reinstate their original emotional reaction as though it were happening in the present. Almost all children recognized and agreed that the precipitating events described by their parents had occurred. Across all emotions, children instructed to use all three emotion cues generated the most detailed, goal-directed, and causally structured accounts, and also recalled more additional experiences associated with each emotion episode. These results show that the quantity, content, and organization of memory for emotional events are affected significantly by reinstatement of the original emotional reaction.