Understanding emotional memory trade-offs

Abstract

Though people tend to remember emotional information with extreme vividness, this vividness often comes at the cost of memory for surrounding information. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate this memory trade-off and how it is influenced by focused attention, trait anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In each study, participants were shown composite pictures that included an emotional or neutral item placed on a neutral background. Later, they were shown the same items and backgrounds separately. A memory trade-off occurred when participants were more likely to remember emotional items and forget the associated backgrounds as compared to equivalent memory for neutral items and backgrounds. The results from the first chapter revealed that the amount of overt visual attention on an emotional item did not predict the presence of the memory trade-off. However, when it was task relevant to disengage one's attention from the emotional item, the memory trade-off was dampened. Further, dividing attention had no effect on the memory trade-off. The results of the second chapter demonstrated that the memory trade-off was enhanced for emotional items with high levels of arousal as compared to low arousal items. This enhancement was especially strong for individuals with high trait anxiety, when this information was negative and arousing, and when the scene was remembered with a sense of familiarity. Further, for items and backgrounds that were vividly recollected, individuals with higher levels of anxiety were less likely to be able to modulate the memory trade-off, even when it was task relevant to attend to background information. The third chapter revealed that people with PTSD have a larger memory trade-off for both positive and negative information, despite the lack of overall item memory differences. These studies reveal that attention may not be the only factor that influences the memory trade-off and that the memory trade-off may be influenced by trait anxiety and PTSD.