Glory Chima

Undergraduate Student
McGill Univ
Email author

Emotional Arousal Effects on Event Memory

Glory Chima, Jamie Snytte, Signy Sheldon

My name is Glory Chima, and I recently graduated from McGill University with my bachelor's degree in honours psychology. My research focuses on the effects of emotional arousal on episodic memory.

Emotional Arousal Effects on Event Memory

Glory Chima, Jamie Snytte, Signy Sheldon
Abstract

Previous research indicates that individuals are more likely to recall emotional information compared to neutral information and that emotional arousal can impact how subsequent memories are formed, presenting as a carry-over memory-enhancing effect of arousal. In the present experiment, we examined the effects of emotional arousal on the recall of complex events. Participants viewed two sets of clips, each containing an emotional and neutral clip. They were subsequently tasked with recalling as many details from each clip as they could remember. Participants’ recollections were scored against a previously created list of all event details in each video. We found a main effect of emotion on the proportion of details recalled from each clip, as participants recalled a greater proportion of event details from the emotional clips compared to the neutral clips. We also found partial evidence for a carry-over enhancement effect of arousal on memory. For one of the sets of clips, when participants viewed the emotionally arousing video first, they recalled the subsequent neutral video with more event details. Together, these findings provide more insight into the complex effects of emotional arousal on event memory.