The coupling of emotion and cognition in the eye: introducing the pupil old/new effect.
The study presented here investigated the effects of emotional valence on the memory for words by assessing both memory performance and pupillary responses during a recognition memory task. Participants had to make speeded judgments on whether a word presented in the test phase of the experiment had already been presented ("old") or not ("new"). An emotion-induced recognition bias was observed: Words with emotional content not only produced a higher amount of hits, but also elicited more false alarms than neutral words. Further, we found a distinct pupil old/new effect characterized as an elevated pupillary response to hits as opposed to correct rejections. Interestingly, this pupil old/new effect was clearly diminished for emotional words. We therefore argue that the pupil old/new effect is not only able to mirror memory retrieval processes, but also reflects modulation by an emotion-induced recognition bias.
Võ
Melissa L-H
ML
Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany. lehoa@psy.uni-muenchen.de
Jacobs
Arthur M
AM
Kuchinke
Lars
L
Hofmann
Markus
M
Conrad
Markus
M
Schacht
Annekathrin
A
Hutzler
Florian
F
D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012025:Reflex, Pupillary / Q000502:physiology*