Forgetting in Recognition Memory for Emotional Environmental Sounds Restricted; Files Only

Abstract

Emotional events tend to be more memorable than neutral ones, and this memory advantage often increases over time. While the slower forgetting of emotional episodic memories has been found in many studies that have used visual stimuli (e.g., pictures and visually presented words), little is known about whether emotional auditory stimuli are forgotten slower than neutral auditory stimuli. Here we examined whether emotion slowed the forgetting of environmental sounds and to what extent emotional effects on recognition memory and forgetting were reflected in two key components of episodic memory: recollection (successful recognition accompanied by the ability to retrieve contextual information about an item’s prior occurrence) and familiarity (memory strength, in the absence of recollection). Participants listened to sets of negative and neutral environmental sounds and rated their emotional reactions to each sound on each trial. Recognition memory was assessed using a remember-familiar recognition memory paradigm after 15-min and 24-hr delays, to assess forgetting for overall recognition memory performance and for estimates of recollection and familiarity. The results revealed that overall recognition memory was enhanced for negative relative to neutral environmental sounds at both delay intervals, and this enhancement was found for both the recollection and familiarity components of recognition memory. Forgetting for negative environmental sounds was slower for recollection relative to neutral sounds, but forgetting for familiarity was similar for both negative and neutral sounds. In summary, the current study found that emotional arousal can enhance both recollection and familiarity-based recognition of environmental sounds and that forgetting was selectively slower for negative vs. neutral sounds for recollection. Relative to previous findings with emotional neutral stimuli, our findings suggest that emotional effects on memory and forgetting vary across auditory and visual modalities, a finding which has potential implications for the existing theoretical models of forgetting.

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About this Master's Thesis

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Psychology
Subfield / Discipline	Clinical Psychology
Degree	M.A.
Submission	Master's Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, General Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Experimental
Palavra-chave	forgetting environmental sounds recognition recollection emotion memory
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Stephan Hamann, Emory University
Committee Members	Joseph Manns, Emory University Patricia Brennan, Emory University

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	File download under embargo until 16 August 2025	2023-08-11 20:13:14 -0400	File download under embargo until 16 August 2025

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