The effect of divided attention on emotion-induced memory narrowing

Abstract

Individuals are more likely to remember emotional than neutral information, but this benefit does not always extend to the surrounding background information. This memory narrowing is theorised to be linked to the availability of attentional resources at encoding. In contrast to the predictions of this theoretical account, altering participants' attentional resources at encoding by dividing attention did not affect emotion-induced memory narrowing. Attention was divided using three separate manipulations: a digit ordering task (Experiment 1), an arithmetic task (Experiment 2) and an auditory discrimination task (Experiment 3). Across all three experiments, divided attention decreased memory across the board but did not affect the degree of memory narrowing. These findings suggest that theories to explain memory narrowing must be expanded to include other potential mechanisms beyond the limitations of attentional resources.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• Memory
• Attention

This research was supported by NIMH [grant number MH080833] (to E.A.K.), grants from the American Psychological Foundation (to E.A.K. and to J.D.W.) and the American Psychological Association (to J.D.W.), and by a National Defense Science and Engineering graduate fellowship (to K.R.M.S.). Portions of this paper were included in the dissertation of K.R.M.S. The authors thank Matthew Hall for his extensive assistance with testing, analysis and reporting for Experiment 1. The authors also thank Halle Zucker, Carolyn Humber, Michael O'Hara, Joana Bueno, Sara Samaha and Sarah Collier for assistance with participant testing and data management. We thank Scott Slotnick, Maya Tamir and David Smith for helpful discussion about this project.

This research was supported by NIMH [grant number MH080833] (to E.A.K.), grants from the American Psychological Foundation (to E.A.K. and to J.D.W.) and the American Psychological Association (to J.D.W.), and by a National Defense Science and Engineering graduate fellowship (to K.R.M.S.). Portions of this paper were included in the dissertation of K.R.M.S. The authors thank Matthew Hall for his extensive assistance with testing, analysis and reporting for Experiment 1. The authors also thank Halle Zucker, Carolyn Humber, Michael O'Hara, Joana Bueno, Sara Samaha and Sarah Collier for assistance with participant testing and data management. We thank Scott Slotnick, Maya Tamir and David Smith for helpful discussion about this project.

Supplementary Data

Supplementary figure and content are available via the ‘Supplementary’ tab on the article's online page (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.858616).

Notes

¹ For the accuracy on the divided attention tasks, participants did better on the divided attention task during the ISI than during the picture, F(1, 38) = 63.909, p < .001. Participants also did better on the divided attention task for neutral than negative scenes, F(1, 38) = 6.095, p < .05. There was no significant interaction between valence and divided attention task, F < .5, p > .5.

² This pattern also remained when each scene was considered separately. Negative scenes were more likely than neutral ones to have the item remembered and the background forgotten, and this likelihood was unaffected by divided attention.

³ The percent correct for the divided attention task did not differ by valence F(2, 102) = .531, p = .589.