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.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional memory
• negative arousal
• attention narrowing
• binding
• multinomial modelling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In the original model of Riefer and Batchelder (1995), the s-parameter and the r₁-parameter allegedly reflect the storage probability of a stimulus pair and the recognition retrieval probability of a stimulus pair, respectively. However, these parameter interpretations are not reasonable. If s reflected associative storage, the model would have to account for recognition retrieval of individual target stimuli in case of non-associative storage (cf. Küpper-Tetzel & Erdfelder, 2012; Riefer & Rouder, 1992). Likewise, successful recognition of one stimulus of a stimulus pair does not imply that the whole stimulus pair has been retrieved. Hence, it is implausible to assume that r₁ reflects the recognition retrieval probability of a stored stimulus pair. For that reason, in the adapted model version presented here, s and r₁ refer to the storage probability and recognition retrieval probability of the target stimuli only. These parameter interpretations are not only much more plausible but are also supported by validation analyses of Riefer and Batchelder, which show that the association strength between a stimulus pair only affects r₂. In contrast, s is responsive to encoding manipulations (e.g. depth of encoding, number of presentations) and r₁ to recognition retrieval manipulations (e.g. free versus forced choice recognition, frequency of targets) that are not specifically related to associative storage and retrieval.

2. In the database Deutscher Wortschatz – Portal (Projekt Deutscher Wortschatz, 1998) the frequency class of a word is defined in relation to the frequency of the German article der, which is the most frequent word in the German language. For example, the frequency class of the German word Tumor is 13 because the article der is 2¹³ times more frequent than Tumor. Hence, the lower the frequency class of a word the higher the actual word frequency.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a University of Mannheim autonomy grant.