The Effect of Emotion on Associative and Item Memory

Numerous studies to date have demonstrated superior memory for emotional compared to neutral stimuli (Kensinger & Corkin, 2004; Bennion et al., 2013). This finding, although relatively stable across the item memory literature, becomes less consistent when examined in tasks measuring memory for associative or source information (Chiu et al., 2013). For this reason, the present study set out to examine how emotional content (negative, positive and neutral word pairs) influences memory in two distinct associative and item recognition tasks: associative identification (AI), associative reinstatement (AR), paired-item recognition, and single-item recognition. In measuring the influence of emotion on associations using an explicit (AI) and implicit (AR) recognition task, our study provides evidence suggesting that the emotion-enhancement (or arousal-dependent amygdala activation) typically observed in the item literature may actually be working against the process of binding (Murray & Kensinger, 2014; Mather, 2007). Additionally, in measuring the influence of emotion in two different item recognition tasks, we also find that presentation of items during encoding and test maybe vital to this effect

Healthy ageing reduces the precision of episodic memory retrieval.

Episodic memory declines with older age, but it is unresolved whether this decline reflects reduced probability of successfully retrieving information from memory, or decreased precision of the retrieved information. Here, we used continuous measures of episodic memory retrieval in combination with computational mixture modeling of participants' retrieval errors to distinguish between these two potential accounts of age-related memory deficits. In three experiments, young and older participants encoded stimulus displays consisting of everyday objects varying along different perceptual features (e.g., location, color and orientation) in a circular space. At test, participants recreated the features of studied objects using a continuous response dial. Across all 3 experiments, we observed significant age-related declines in the precision of episodic memory retrieval, whereas significant age differences in retrieval success were limited to the most challenging task condition. Reductions in mnemonic precision were evident across different object features retained in long-term memory and persisted after controlling for age-related decreases in the fidelity of perception and working memory. The findings highlight impoverished precision of memory representations as one factor contributing to age-related episodic memory loss and suggest that the cognitive and neural changes associated with older age may differentially affect distinct aspects of episodic retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).This study was funded by BBSRC grant BB/L02263X/1 and James S. McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award #220020333 awarded to J.S.S., and was carried out within the University of Cambridge Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, funded by a joint award from the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust

Flexible updating of dynamic knowledge structures

Schemas are knowledge structures that allow us to make efficient judgments about the world without the cost of memorizing every detail of previous experiences. It has long been known that schemas can enhance long-term memory for related information. The usefulness of schemas, however, critically depends on their adaptability: how flexibly a schema can be updated according to changing environmental conditions. Prior consolidation of a schema supports new learning of schema-consistent information. Yet, the effect of consolidation on inconsistent information, and how schemas may be subsequently updated, are not well understood. It is difficult to track the dynamic updating of knowledge structures with traditional memory measures. Here, using a continuous-report paradigm, we were able to show that schematization increases incrementally with consolidation and that the strength with which schemas are initially established predicts schema-guided responding in a later test. Critically, schema updating in response to inconsistent information was more pronounced in a group which was given time to consolidate compared to a group that was not given time to consolidate. Importantly, the later group reverted back to the no longer relevant schema, indicating that systematic bias towards old information, rather than increased forgetting underlies decreased memory for schema-inconsistent information

Research data supporting "Healthy ageing reduces the precision of episodic memory retrieval"

Microsoft excel spreadsheet containing anonymised behavioural data from three experiments reported in the manuscript “Healthy ageing reduces the precision of episodic memory retrieval”. Sheet 1 contains data from Experiment 1, Sheet 2 data from Experiment 2, and Sheet 3 data from Experiment 3. Data were collected from healthy younger (aged 18 – 30) and older (aged 60 –82) individuals completing a computerized memory task. Two parameters of memory performance; the probability of successful memory retrieval (pT) and the precision of memory retrieval (Κ), were estimated for each participant and task condition with mixture modelling code available at https://www.paulbays.com/code/JV10/index.php. For Experiment 2, mean memory vividness is also reported for each participant. Variable names are defined in the “readme.txt” file. See the main manuscript for more details

Flexible updating of dynamic knowledge structures

Schemas are knowledge structures that allow us to make efficient judgments about the world without the cost of memorizing every detail of previous experiences. It has long been known that schemas can enhance long-term memory for related information. The usefulness of schemas, however, critically depends on their adaptability: how flexibly a schema can be updated according to changing environmental conditions. Prior consolidation of a schema supports new learning of schema-consistent information. Yet, the effect of consolidation on inconsistent information, and how schemas may be subsequently updated, are not well understood. It is difficult to track the dynamic updating of knowledge structures with traditional memory measures. Here, using a continuous-report paradigm, we were able to show that schematization increases incrementally with consolidation and that the strength with which schemas are initially established predicts schema-guided responding in a later test. Critically, schema updating in response to inconsistent information was more pronounced in a group which was given time to consolidate compared to a group that was not given time to consolidate. Importantly, the later group reverted back to the no longer relevant schema, indicating that systematic bias towards old information, rather than increased forgetting underlies decreased memory for schema-inconsistent information