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The Contribution of Relatedness and Distinctiveness to Emotionally-Enhanced Memory

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The Contribution of Relatedness and Distinctiveness to Emotionally-Enhanced Memory Journal of Memory and Language Journal of Memory and Language 56 (2007) 555–574 www.elsevier.com/locate/jml The contribution of relatedness and distinctiveness to emotionally-enhanced memory Deborah Talmi *, Betty T.C. Luk, Lucy M. McGarry, Morris Moscovitch * Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ont., Canada M5S 3G3 Received 4 December 2005; revision received 30 December 2006 Available online 13 March 2007 Abstract Emotional events are more organized and distinctive than neutral events. We asked whether organization and dis- tinctiveness can account for emotionally-enhanced memory. To examine organization, we compared memory for arous- ing, negatively-valenced pictures, and inter-related neutral pictures. To examine distinctiveness, we manipulated list composition, and compared mixed lists, which contained emotional and neutral items, to pure lists, which contained only items of a single type and removed the relative-distinctiveness advantage of emotional items. We show that emo- tional memory is enhanced in immediate memory tests as long as either organization or distinctiveness is allowed to play a role. When these effects are removed, in the comparison of emotional and related neutral items in pure lists, the emotional memory advantage is eliminated. Examining the contribution of mediating cognitive factors at a behav- ioral and neural level is crucial if we are to understand how emotion influences memory. Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Memory; Emotion; Arousal; Relatedness; Distinctiveness; Free recall The mnemonic advantage of emotional events has tion had a chance to exert its effects (e.g. Hamann, been replicated frequently in the laboratory (for review, Cahill, McGaugh, & Squire, 1997; Kensinger, Brierley, see Dolan, 2002; Labar & Cabeza, 2006), but the mech- Medford, Growdon, & Corkin, 2002; LaBar & Phelps, anism(s) underlying it are not understood fully. LaBar 1998; MacKay et al., 2004; Phelps, LaBar, & Spencer, and Cabeza review evidence that emotional arousal 1997; Phelps et al., 1998). The present study examines can modulate the long-term consolidation of memory the role of cognitive variables as mediating factors of traces, so that when tested hours and days after study, the emotional memory advantage—the possibility that memory for emotional items is better than memory for emotionality is crucial, but is not the direct cause, of neutral ones. This neurobiological model can account the better memory for emotional items. Specifically, we for the prolonged effects emotion has on memory, but propose that emotion may have important memory con- not for the mnemonic benefits that are already seen in sequences because it links separate events together, and immediate memory tests, before differential consolida- also allows them to stand out relative to background neutral events. Since both organization and distinctive- ness can enhance memory (Hunt & McDaniel, 1993), * Corresponding authors. Fax: +1 416 978 4811. regardless of emotionality, the effect of emotion on these E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Talmi), factors could account for the advantage of emotional [email protected] (M. Moscovitch). items over neutral ones. While mediation explanations 0749-596X/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2007.01.002 556 D. Talmi et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 56 (2007) 555–574 could account for both the immediate and the delayed ‘absolute’ and a ‘relative’ sense. Schmidt (1991; see also memory advantage of emotional items, we focus on Hunt & McDaniel 1993) defines absolute (‘secondary’) immediate tests here to remove the complicating factor distinctiveness as the result of the limited overlap of of differential consolidation that is present in delayed the features of the item (e.g. an image of a hungry child) testing situations. with the ‘active conceptual framework’, a term used to define the typical items that are stored pre-experimen- tally in long-term memory (e.g. neutral images of people, Emotion and organization buildings, and vehicles). Emotional items are more dis- tinct than neutral ones because they possess unique fea- Emotional items are related because they share cate- tures which are not shared with other items that gory membership and a thematic relationship (the words typically make up the ‘active conceptual framework’. ‘‘torture’’ and ‘‘pain’’, a picture of a gun and a picture of A core feature that emotional items do not typically a dead body). Recently, we have shown that enhanced share with neutral items is their relevance to partici- memory for emotional words, which was present in the pants’ goals (Lazarus, 1991). The idea is that an image comparison with randomly-selected neutral words, was like that of a hungry child has an emotional impact eliminated in the comparison with equally related neu- because it is relevant to the observer’s goal, such as a tral words (Talmi & Moscovitch, 2004). Since related- goal to care for conspecifics. Goal-relevance, in turn, ness itself can enhance memory by improving list makes emotional items interesting (Bradley, 1994) and organization at encoding as well as aiding retrieval allows them to evoke unique physiological responses (Gardiner, Craik, & Birtwistle, 1972; Hunt & McDaniel, (Ochsner, 2000), additional features that emotional 1993; Mandler, 1967), the finding that emotional mem- items do not share with typical neutral items in the ory advantage was eliminated when relatedness was con- active conceptual framework, and add to their absolute trolled supported the hypothesis that differential distinctiveness or ‘unusualness’ (Adolphs, Denburg, & relatedness can completely account for emotionally- Tranel, 2001). In this sense, then, goal-relevance influ- enhanced memory for words (for similar suggestions ences both the ability of an event to evoke emotions, see Maratos & Rugg, 2001; Phelps et al., 1997). as well as the distinctiveness of the event. Because the emotional words Talmi and Moscovitch According to Schmidt (1991), relative (‘primary’) dis- (2004) used were not taboo words, they may not have tinctiveness is a result of an item’s limited overlap with been arousing enough to allow the emotional memory the items stored in the active conceptual framework advantage to be manifested above and beyond the effects which participants maintain in working memory. For of differential relatedness. Buchanan, Etzel, Adolphs, example, a black letter in a stimulus stream is not abso- and Tranel (2006) replicated the finding of equivalent lutely distinct, but is relatively distinct when all other let- memory for emotional and related-neutral words, but ters are blue. Within the typical experimental context, extended it to show that taboo words, which were more when emotional items are presented alongside neutral arousing than non-taboo emotional words, were recalled ones, their absolute distinctiveness makes them stand better than related-neutral words (see also MacKay out relative to the neutral items, so that they are both et al., 2004). Since emotional arousal, rather than absolutely and relatively distinct. valence, is believed to be responsible for the memory It is possible to change an item’s relative distinctive- enhancement effects of emotional material (Hamann, ness by changing participants’ active conceptual 2001; Zald, 2003), it is important to ensure that the emo- framework. This can be done by presenting abso- tional material used to study this effect is as arousing as lutely-distinct items either in a mixed list that contains possible. Thus, our first goal in the present study was to indistinct items, or in a pure list, that blocks item type. find out whether equating relatedness eliminates the Items with absolute distinctiveness will only be rela- emotional advantage even when emotional items are tively distinct in the mixed-list condition. For example, very arousing. Here we used negatively-valenced, arous- a picture of a gun is relatively distinct after viewing a ing photographs depicting scenes of violence and mutila- series of images from daily life, but less so after viewing tion as the emotional stimuli. The comparison neutral a series of robbery images. After reviewing the litera- stimuli consisted of randomly-selected neutral pictures, ture, Schmidt (1991) concluded that only relative, but as well as neutral pictures of domestic scenes which were not absolute, distinctiveness enhances memory. That as related to one another as the emotional pictures. conclusion was based on findings with bizarre sen- tences, with humorous sentences, and with orthograph- ically distinct items—all of which are remembered Emotion and distinctiveness better in mixed lists that contain common, non-humor- ous and orthographically regular items, but not in pure Emotional items are not only organized better than lists (Einstein & McDaniel, 1987; Hunt & Elliot, 1980; neutral items, but also are more distinct in both an Schmidt, 1994). Recently, Dewhurst and Parry (2000) D. Talmi et al. / Journal of Memory and Language 56 (2007) 555–574 557 have shown that the enhancing effect of emotion on Experiment 1 recollection was present only in a mixed list of emo- tional and random-neutral words, but not when pure In Experiment 1, participants studied three pure lists lists were compared, and suggested that differential rel- of emotional, random neutral, and related neutral items, ative distinctiveness underlies the effect of emotion. or three mixed list that combined all
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