The disconnect between metamemory and memory for emotional images

ABSTRACT

Emotional information is reliably predicted to be remembered better than neutral information, and this has been found for words, images, and facial expressions. However, many studies find that these judgments of learning (JOLs) are not predictive of memory performance (e.g. [Hourihan, K. L. (2020). Misleading emotions: Judgments of learning overestimate recognition of negative and positive emotional images. Cognition and Emotion, 34(4), 771–782. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1682972]). The present study investigates and rules out numerous potential causes for this discrepancy between memory predictions and performance, including (1) reactivity to making JOLs, (2) idiosyncrasies of specific images used, (3), type of memory test, and (4) effects of fluency. Three additional experiments investigate whether JOLs can become more predictive of memory performance, either by experience with the task or by manipulating prior beliefs about memory for emotional images. In all experiments, we found the same effect: Emotional images are inaccurately predicted to be remembered better than neutral images. The results suggest that emotion is used as a heuristic for learning, resulting in low metamnemonic accuracy for emotional stimuli.

KEYWORDS:

• Metamemory; emotion; judgments of learning; fluency; recognition memory

Acknowledgements

We thank Kathleen Hourihan for providing access to the image lists used in (Hourihan, 2020). We thank our research assistants Emma Cohen, Sophia Fabrizio, Tara Holihan, Hannah Nelson, Anna Nicotra, Debra Perlmutter, and Kayla Rust, for their work in collecting data.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability

All stimuli lists and data can be found on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/rtwjq/?view_only=c19e4682851649f697d2461bcc085454

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.