Effects of Emotional Context during Encoding: An Advantage for Negative Context in Immediate Recognition and Positive Context in Delayed Recognition

Asako Toyama, Maya Katsuhara, Yoshio Sakurai, Hideki Ohira

Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
RIKEN BSI-Toyota Collaboration Center (BTCC), RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Saitama, Japan.

DOI: 10.4236/psych.2014.59111                

Abstract

This study examined the effect of emotional context on recognition memory for neutral targets over time. Participants (N = 36) read sentences with negative, neutral, or positive valence in which emotionally neutral target words were embedded. Two groups of participants were asked to recognize targets after different retention intervals, immediate and 24-hour. Performance was better in the immediate recognition group than that in the delayed recognition group. The two groups showed opposite effects of emotional context: Target words in negative sentences were best remembered with immediate recognition but worst after a 24-hour delay. These results support the idea that emotional valence has different impacts on memory over time.

Keywords

Emotional Context, Recognition of Words, Retention Interval

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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