This chapter is extracted from the book entitled « Memory and Emotion, The making of lasting memories » by McGaugh (2003). The field of his book is larger and many researchers have studied the impact of emotions on our memory accuracy or on our memory mistakes. In this research context, studies have investigated two types of influences : on the one hand the effect of emotion’s induction in subject on their recall and, on the other hand, the impact of the arousal of the information to learn (e.g., word that cause an emotional reaction) on the retention. This chapter is in line with the second area of study.
James L. McGaugh is an American neurobiologist, author and co-author of many scientific articles on memory. More importantly his publications concern the influence of emotion on memory consolidation. This chapter sets out to investigate the different researches which evaluate the implication of emotionally arousing information on memory functioning. The purpose of this extract is to determine the extent to which emotions could enhance memory for words or stories in laboratory as well as in real life.
Initially, Kleinsmith and Kaplan (1963) demonstrated that emotionally arousing words were better remembered than non-emotional arousing words but only after a retention delay. These findings were confirmed by studies about real events: arousing content of information appears to create strong memories. Memorization’s enhancement was not only observed for words or real events, it was also seen for fictional stories. Indeed, in Cahill & McGaugh study (1998), two groups were given the same story in which few elements differed: an entirely neutral narration for the first group, and for the second one, a mixed narration with neutral and emotionally arousing parts. After a delay of two weeks, participants of second group recalled better the arousing information than the neutral ones. Moreover, the neutral information’s recall didn’t differ from one another.
On the whole, if these studies seem to confirm the influence of arousal on recall, the mechanisms underpinning are not fully understood yet. Author mentioned several explanatory hypotheses to interpret these outcomes. First was that arousal could induce a better attention during the event. The second explanation might be that the emotionally arousing event is more often rehearsed, thus more recalled. But the lack of empirical evidence disproves this last hypothesis.
As mentioned before, McGaugh’s goal was to demonstrate and understand why emotions could enhance long term memory for words or stories in laboratory as well as in real life. This chapter focuses on several major studies of this field, which demonstrate the link between arousal and memory. Kleinsmith and Kaplan’s study is one of the first that reveals arousal’s influence on memory retention but only after a delay. Therefore, McGaugh reaches a part of his goal ; his chapter offers a representative view of results in this field.
Nonetheless, the underlying mechanisms of these results remain partially understood and McGaugh points it out. At the end of this extract, he evokes two hypotheses that could explain the found results. One of them concerns « attention », according to McGaugh : « enhanced attention to the experiences during emotional arousal is one reasonable and likely possibility ». However, this hypothesis is still questioned since a study highlights that even when the attentional resources allocated to stimuli is minimized, arousal enhances memory consolidation and allows slower forgetting. The second hypothesis is that aroused information are more often rehearsed than neutral information. Nevertheless, these two hypotheses have not received sufficient empirical evidences to explain the relation between arousal and enhanced memory. McGaugh wrote many articles on this subject and demonstrates that arousal, memory consolidation and the brain are linked. In fact, he proves, in these studies, that memory is influenced by emotional arousal via amygdala activation and the adrenergic system.
This extract raises questions about memory accuracy of emotionally events, as expected by the author: « emotions provide no guarantee of permanent or perfectly accurate recall » (lines 75-76). Nonetheless, according to McGaugh we can trust these kinds of memories. Review of this field seems to confirm this assumption because Kaplan’s study on emotions and false memories have proven that emotions which appeared after an event could enhance the event memory’s quality and letting people less vulnerable to false memories (Kaplan, Van Damme, Levine, & Loftus, 2016).
Despite the relevance of cited studies, McGaugh presents a limited number of studies. Nonetheless, on the one hand, some studies have found same outcomes (LaBar & Phelps, 1998) but, on the other hand, recent studies tend to explain the enhancement of memory by valence rather than arousal. The term “valence” refers to the intrinsic pleasure (positive valence) or aversiveness (negative valence) aspect of a word, event or situation. In fact, using a recognition test for over 2500 words Adelman and Estes (2013) revealed that the impact of positive and negative word on memory could not be ascribed to arousal. That is, arousal is not a necessary factor of emotional memory benefit. Finally, in my opinion this extract focuses on two elements: (1) it demonstrates that influence of arousal on memory appears for retrieving of real event as well as of laboratory material and (2) that more studies are necessary to understand this effect.
Key words: Arousal, Memory, Valence, Rehearsal
Words I have learned :
Field (of study): a domain of research (un domaine d’étude)
Rehearsal: cognitive process in which information is repeated over and over to learning it (mécanisme de repetition)
To disprove: to prove that is wrong (réfuter)
To ascribe: to attribute a phenomenon to (something) (attribuer à)
Aversiveness: related to negative situations which could cause avoidance (élément qui provoque de l’aversion)
Bibliography :
Adelman, J. S., & Estes, Z. (2013). Emotion and memory: A recognition advantage for positive and negative words independent of arousal. Cognition, 129(3), 530‑535.
Cahill, L., & McGaugh, J. L. (1998). Mechanisms of emotional arousal and lasting declarative memory. Trends in Neurosciences, 21(7), 294‑299.
Kaplan, R. L., Van Damme, I., Levine, L. J., & Loftus, E. F. (2016). Emotion and False Memory. Emotion Review, 8(1), 8‑13.
Kleinsmith, L. J., & Kaplan, S. (1963). Paired-associate learning as a function of arousal and interpolated interval. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65(2), 190‑193.
McGaugh, J. L. (2003). Memory and emotion: The Making of Lasting Memories. New York, NY, US: Columbia University Press.
Clarisse RENAUDIN, M2 PPCECC