Previous studies using an incidental learning paradigm have found that facial emotion enhances subsequent face recognition. The present study examined whether emotion enhances only memory for the specific emotional features, or whether it also enhances general memory of that person's identity. Prior to the study, we had 20 participants validate the face stimuli with emotion valence (how positive or negative) and arousal (how exciting or calming) ratings. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants performed a gender discrimination task on a face expressing either an angry or a happy emotion, unaware that they would later be tested on their recognition of those faces (i.e., incidental learning). They then performed a 20-minute distraction task. Finally, they performed a recognition test, judging whether each face identity was previously shown ("old") or not ("new"). We found enhanced memory of angry faces, relative to happy faces, when the exact same face - showing the same emotion - was used during the later recognition test (Experiment 1), but not when a neutral face was used at test (Experiment 2). This finding suggests that negative emotional expressions improve memory for that specific emotional expression, without improving general memory for that person's identity.
INTRODUCTION The mechanisms underlying visual memory for scenes and pictures by virtue of their affective contents offer an array of possibilities for further explorations. An enhanced memory for emotional contents owes to the salience by virtue of the information embedded through emotionality. Emotional enhancement effect in a wide range of laboratory studies have been demonstrated using a variety of experimental tasks in which the likelihood of remembering emotional than non-emotional or neutral information in visual scenes and picture have been demonstrated. Also, people often remember central, emotional information contained in visual scenes and pictures at the expense of background details. Such phenomenon is often termed as memory trade-off. Memory trade-off by virtue of its construct and implications has been one of the most entertaining grounds of research. The exact underlying processing of memory trade-off specific to emotional pictures implicates an enquiry into the mechanisms underlying. 1.1 Salience of Emotional Memory Emotional salience of a stimulus is mostly distinct in memory processing. A tremendous amount of research has suggested that emotion confers memory benefits (Kensinger, 2006; Mather, 2003). Though true photographic memory is not inherent to human memory the clarity of human memory in terms of retention remains a fact. However, the vividness and accuracy may not be maintained when it comes about detailed description or representation through retention. A distortion is rather apparent over time. Such effects have been in fact, evident in laboratory studies, particularly for,
Research suggests that emotional stimuli can modulate item and associative memory performance. While enhancing the memory for individual item components, when integrating the components together in memory, emotional stimuli are known to either- facilitate binding between stimuli (Arousal Enhances Binding Hypothesis; Mather, 2007; Broaden-and-build theory, Frederickson, 1998), or impair binding due to attentional narrowing (Christianson, 1992) or perceptual-affective trade-offs (Mandler, 1975). Previous research, using emotionally arousing words (Naveh-Benjamin et al., 2012) or pictures (Nashiro & Mather, 2011), indicates consistent item memory improvement, with either no effect of these stimuli on associative memory performance or a pattern of results trending towards the trade-off hypothesis. The present study attempted to further investigate the effect of valence (happy, sad) and arousal by using powerful emotion inducing stimuli - faces with emotional expressions, on item and associative memory for face-name pairs among younger and older adults. In Experiment 1, item and associative recognition memory were tested for faces, names and face-name pairs. In Experiment 2, the effect of emotion was strengthened by repeating the face-name pairs at study. The results indicated that positive valence improved performance on both tests relative to negative valence. However, relative to neutral stimuli, overall emotional arousal hurt associative memory performance in both age groups, while not showing a benefit for the emotional faces themselves.
Emotion can impact various aspects of our cognition and behavior, by enhancing or impairing them (e.g., enhanced attention to and memory for emotional events, or increased distraction produced by goal-irrelevant emotional information). On the other hand, emotion processing is also susceptible to cognitive influences, typically exerted in the form of cognitive control of motion, or emotion regulation. Despite important recent progress in understanding emotion- cognition interactions, a number of aspects remain unclear. The present book comprises a collection of manuscripts discussing emerging evidence regarding the mechanisms underlying emotion- cognition interactions in healthy functioning and alterations associated with clinical conditions, in which such interactions are dysfunctional. Initiated with a more restricted focus, targeting (1) identification and in depth analysis of the circumstances in which emotion enhances or impairs cognition and (2)identification of the role of individual differences in these effects, our book has emerged into a comprehensive collection of outstanding contributions investigating emotion-cognition interactions, based on approaches spanning from behavioral and lesion to pharmacological and brain imaging, and including empirical, theoretical, and review papers alike. Co-hosted by the Frontiers in Neuroscience - Integrative Neuroscience and Frontiers in Psychology - Emotion Science, the contributions comprising our book and the associated research topic are grouped around the following seven main themes, distributed across the two hosting journals: I. Emotion and Selectivity in Attention and Memory; II. The Impact of Emotional Distraction; Linking Enhancing and Impairing Effects of Emotion; III. What Really is the Role of the Amygdala?; IV. Age Differences in Emotion Processing; The Role of Emotional Valence; V. Affective Face Processing, Social Cognition, and Personality Neuroscience; VI. Stress, Mood, Emotion, and the Prefrontal Cortex; The Role of Control in the Stress Response; VII. Emotion-Cognition Interactions in Clinical Conditions. As illustrated by the present collection of contributions, emotion-cognition interactions can be identified at different levels of processing, from perception and attention to long- term memory, decision making processes, and social cognition and behavior. Notably, these effects are subject to individual differences that may affect the way we perceive, experience, and remember emotional experiences, or cope with emotionally challenging situations. Moreover, these opposing effects tend to co-occur in affective disorders, such as depression and PTSD, where uncontrolled recollection of and rumination on distressing memories also lead to impaired cognition due to emotional distraction. Understanding the nature and neural mechanisms of these effects is critical, as their exacerbation and co-occurrence in clinical conditions lead to devastating effects and debilitation. Hence, bringing together such diverse contributions has allowed not only an integrative understanding of the current extant evidence but also identification of emerging directions and concrete venues for future investigations.
In the past 30 years, face perception has become an area of major interest within psychology. This is the most comprehensive and commanding review of the field ever published.
"The literature on directed forgetting - which refers to forgetting the specified information intentionally - has almost exclusively focused on either emotional words or pictures. Consequently, little is known about the impact of facial stimuli that demand more complex cognitive processing than words or pictures. A pilot study was conducted to obtain norm ratings on 152 facial images portraying neutral, happy and angry emotions. From this set of facial stimuli, 96 faces were selected for the main study. In the main study, 75 female participants were presented with 48 faces individually with equal number of happy and angry and, male and female faces. Half the faces were followed by a cue to remember and the remaining half a cue to forget. Following which, all participants were presented with emotionally neutral faces and asked to indicate if they had seen the face or not, including those they were previously told to forget." -- Author's abstract.
Perceptual learning is the specific and relatively permanent modification of perception and behaviour following sensory experience. This book presents advances made during the 1990s in this rapidly growing field.
Recollections of unexpected and emotional events (called 'flashbulb' memories) have long been the subject of theoretical speculation. Previous meetings have brought together everyone who has done research on memories of the Challenger explosion, in order to gain a better understanding of the phenomenon of flashbulb memories. How do flashbulb memories compare with other kinds of recollections? Are they unusually accurate, or especially long-lived? Do they reflect the activity of a special mechanism, as has been suggested? Although Affect and Accuracy in Recall focuses on flashbulb memories, it addresses more general issues of affect and accuracy. Do emotion and arousal strengthen memory? If so, under what conditions? By what physiological mechanisms? This 1993 volume is evidence of progress made in memory research since Brown and Kulick's 1977 paper.
