June 20, 2011

Shock And Recall: Negative Emotion May Enhance Memory


Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found that viewing such emotion-laden images immediately after taking a test actually enhances people's retention of the tested material.




"Memory is labile and dynamic "” after you retrieve something, you're still engaged in processing that information in some way," Finn says.

"Having a picture of a gun pointed at you just after you've just been tested on something probably isn't the best situation for learning, but because there is an intricate relationship between areas involved in emotion and remembering, the amygdala and the hippocampus, we find that the negative picture can enhance later retention."

Finn and Henry L. Roediger III, PhD, James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and dean of academic planning, published their findings in the June 2011 issue of Psychological Science.

The researchers tested 40 undergraduate WUSTL students who studied 10 lists of 10 pairs of Swahili-English vocabulary items (lulu/pearl; ubini/forgery). Participants were given a cued recall test after studying each set of 10 pairs and then given a final test on all 100 pairs.





"The answer appears to be yes, the students continue to process the information during the two-second pause," Finn says.


"For negative emotion to enhance later retention of something, this experiment shows that you have to retrieve that information," Finn says. "That is, you have to go get it. In the absence of retrieval, the negative pictures do not enhance later performance. That's critical."

The study revealed no gender differences in participants' success rates. Finn and Roediger did not measure the effects of physiological parameters such as adrenaline or hormonal responses in connection with the negative arousal.


"Positive content, so far, doesn't seem to be doing the trick," Finn says.


"We've established that the period after retrieval is key in retaining information," Finn says. "We want to build on that foundation and explore it in-depth. We want to see what kinds of manipulations can possibly be introduced in the post-retrieval phase to understand when enhancement or impairment of retention might occur."


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