Impact of individual differences upon emotion-induced memory trade-offs

Abstract

After seeing a scene containing an emotional component (e.g., a snake in a forest) people often demonstrate a “trade-off” in memory, where memory for the emotional component (e.g., the snake) is good, but memory for the non-emotional elements (e.g., the forest) is poor. The result is an incomplete memory retaining central emotional information at the expense of neutral background information. Though almost everyone demonstrates the trade-off, there may be individual differences in the magnitude of the effect. We investigated whether differences in the strength of the trade-off would correlate with anxiety levels, working memory capacity, and executive functioning abilities. Sixty-four participants studied scenes comprised of a negative or neutral item placed on a neutral background, and memory was later tested for items and backgrounds separately. The magnitude of the trade-off correlated positively with anxiety and negatively with visuospatial working memory and executive function. These results suggest that greater anxiety, poor visuospatial working memory, and poor executive function may inhibit formation of complete mental representations of these complex emotional scenes.

Keywords:

• Individual differences
• Emotion
• Memory
• Trade-off

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Harvard Mind, Brain, and Behavior postdoctoral fellowship to JDP, by National Science Foundation grant BCS 0542694 to EAK, and by National Institute on Aging grant NIA AG08441 to DLS.

We thank Kelley Swanberg and Yuliya Nikolova for their assistance testing participants.

Notes

¹ANOVAs revealed no effect of presentation rate on the magnitude of the trade-off for specific recognition, F(1, 39) = 1.56, p=.22, or general recognition scores, F(1, 39)<.1. ANOVAs also revealed no main effect of delay on the magnitude of the trade-off in general recognition scores, F(1, 63) = 2.08, p=.16, and only a trend for an effect of delay upon specific recognition scores, F(1, 63) = 3.62, p=.06[0]. The strength of the correlations between the general and specific recognition trade-offs and cognitive scores also did not differ as a function of presentation rate or delay; using Fisher's r-to-z transformed correlation coefficients revealed no differences in the strength of correlations between cognitive measures and trade-off magnitude that survived the Bonferroni correction: general, z(r) < 2.27, p>.02; specific, z(r) < 2.74, p>.006.