title: The effect of ageing on the recollection of emotional and neutral pictures.
abstract: This study investigated age-related differences in recognition memory for emotional and neutral pictures. Younger and older participants were asked to rate pictures according to their emotional valence, arousal, and visual complexity. Two weeks later they had to recognise these pictures and the states of awareness associated with memory were assessed with the "remember/know/guess" paradigm. We found that, although the influence of emotion on recognition accuracy (as assessed by d') was similar in both age groups, the tendency for positive and negative pictures to create a rich recollective experience was weaker in older adults. In addition, "remember" responses were more often based on a recollection of emotional reactions in older than in younger participants. We suggest that the elderly tend to focus on their feelings when confronted with emotional pictures, which could have impaired their memory for the contextual information associated with these stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Health Psychology, University of Liège, Boulevard du Rectorat B33, 4000 Liège, Belgium. c.comblain@ulg.ac.be
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Comblain
authors.forename: Arnaud
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: D'Argembeau
authors.forename: Martial
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Van der Linden
authors.forename: Laurence
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Aldenhoff
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001143:Arousal; D001364:Awareness; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D008875:Middle Aged; D010781:Photography; D011581:Psychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception