title: Recognition memory for low- and high-frequency-filtered emotional faces: Low spatial frequencies drive emotional memory enhancement, whereas high spatial frequencies drive the emotion-induced recognition bias.
abstract: This article deals with two well-documented phenomena regarding emotional stimuli: emotional memory enhancement-that is, better long-term memory for emotional than for neutral stimuli-and the emotion-induced recognition bias-that is, a more liberal response criterion for emotional than for neutral stimuli. Studies on visual emotion perception and attention suggest that emotion-related processes can be modulated by means of spatial-frequency filtering of the presented emotional stimuli. Specifically, low spatial frequencies are assumed to play a primary role for the influence of emotion on attention and judgment. Given this theoretical background, we investigated whether spatial-frequency filtering also impacts (1) the memory advantage for emotional faces and (2) the emotion-induced recognition bias, in a series of old/new recognition experiments. Participants completed incidental-learning tasks with high- (HSF) and low- (LSF) spatial-frequency-filtered emotional and neutral faces. The results of the surprise recognition tests showed a clear memory advantage for emotional stimuli. Most importantly, the emotional memory enhancement was significantly larger for face images containing only low-frequency information (LSF faces) than for HSF faces across all experiments, suggesting that LSF information plays a critical role in this effect, whereas the emotion-induced recognition bias was found only for HSF stimuli. We discuss our findings in terms of both the traditional account of different processing pathways for HSF and LSF information and a stimulus features account. The double dissociation in the results favors the latter account-that is, an explanation in terms of differences in the characteristics of HSF and LSF stimuli.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Campus A2.4, D-66123, Saarbrücken, Germany. m.rohr@mx.uni-saarland.de.
authors.forename: Michaela
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rohr
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Campus A2.4, D-66123, Saarbrücken, Germany.
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tröger
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Campus A2.4, D-66123, Saarbrücken, Germany.
authors.forename: Nils
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Michely
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Campus A2.4, D-66123, Saarbrücken, Germany.
authors.forename: Alarith
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Uhde
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Saarland University, Campus A2.4, D-66123, Saarbrücken, Germany. wentura@mx.uni-saarland.de.
authors.forename: Dirk
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wentura
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotion; Memory; Spatial frequencies