RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Effects of emotion and semantic relatedness on recognition memory: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.02.28.969659
DO 10.1101/2020.02.28.969659
A1 Meng Han
A1 Bingcan Li
A1 Chunyan Guo
A1 Roni Tibon
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/10/04/2020.02.28.969659.abstract
AB Some aspects of our memory are enhanced by emotion, whereas other can be unaffected or even hinder. In particular, previous studies report impaired associative memory of emotional content, an effect termed associative “emotional interference”. The current study utilized EEG and an associative recognition paradigm to investigate the cognitive and neural mechanisms associated with this effect. In two experiments, participants studied negative and neutral stimulus-pairs that were either semantically related or unrelated. In Experiment 1 emotions were relevant to the encoding task (valence judgment) whereas in Experiment 2 emotions were irrelevant (familiarity judgment). In a subsequent associative recognition test, EEG was recorded while participants discriminated between intact, rearranged, and new pairs. An associative emotional interference effect was observed in both experiments, but was attenuated for semantically related pairs when emotions were relevant to the study task. Moreover, a modulation of an early associative memory ERP component depended on task relevancy of emotions, and occurred for negative pairs when emotions were relevant, but for semantically related pairs when emotions were irrelevant. A later ERP component depicted a more general pattern, and was observed in all experimental conditions. These results suggest that both emotions and semantic relations can act as organizing principles that promote associative binding. Their ability to contribute to successful retrieval depends on specific task demands.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.