title: Emotionally enhanced memory for negatively arousing words: storage or retrieval advantage?
abstract: People typically remember emotionally negative words better than neutral words. Two experiments are reported that investigate whether emotionally enhanced memory (EEM) for negatively arousing words is based on a storage or retrieval advantage. Participants studied non-word-word pairs that either involved negatively arousing or neutral target words. Memory for these target words was tested by means of a recognition test and a cued-recall test. Data were analysed with a multinomial model that allows the disentanglement of storage and retrieval processes in the present recognition-then-cued-recall paradigm. In both experiments the multinomial analyses revealed no storage differences between negatively arousing and neutral words but a clear retrieval advantage for negatively arousing words in the cued-recall test. These findings suggest that EEM for negatively arousing words is driven by associative processes.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences , University of Mannheim , Mannheim , Germany.
authors.forename: Lena
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nadarevic
mesh_terms: D001143:Arousal; D001245:Association Learning; D003463:Cues; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D000069077:Memory Consolidation / Q000502:physiology; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotional memory; attention narrowing; binding; multinomial modelling; negative arousal