Retention interval modulates the effect of negative arousing pictures on recognition memory

ABSTRACT

This study examined the modulation of retention interval in the effect of emotion as elicited from negative and positive arousing pictures on recognition memory. Participants underwent seven encoding sessions and one testing session. The encoding sessions were separated by certain lengths of intervals such that there were seven levels of time gaps between encoding and testing. In each encoding session, participants learned a list of 30 pictures (including 10 neutral, 10 positive and 10 negative pictures). In the testing session, they were presented with a list of 210 old and 210 new pictures and made “old/new” and “remember/know” judgements. The results showed that negative arousing pictures enhanced overall recognition in the 2-week interval and enhanced recollection in both the 2-week and 3-week intervals. However, neither negative nor positive arousing pictures had any effect on familiarity regardless of retention interval. The current study contributes to the literature by suggesting that longer retention intervals do not necessarily lead to more pronounced effects of negative arousing pictures and that the modulation of retention interval depends on the specific components of recognition memory.

KEYWORDS:

• Retention interval
• emotion
• recollection
• familiarity
• recognition memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Because there were a total of seven encoding sessions and some participants were not able to be on time for each session, the retention intervals here represented averaged retention intervals. It is worth noting that the standard deviations were quite small. For instance, for the 19-min and 60-min intervals, the standard deviations were 0.53 and 1.47 respectively.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by The Young Teachers Development Foundation of Central University of Finance and Economics (No. QJJ1715) (中央财经大学”青年教师发展基金”项目) and a Grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31100736) (国家自然科学基金委资助).