The Effect Of Motivational Intensity Of Affect On Depression Tendency College Students’ Source Memory

In recent years, the researchers at home and abroad are paying more attention to emotional effect on source memory. Source memory is the core element of the episodic memory and the memory about event background. The related researches mainly focused on the emotional state, valence and arousal effect on source memory. A large number of studies have shown that negative emotions can improve the accuracy of source memory, but there are no consistent conclusions. Gable and Harmon-Jones(2010 a) put forward the motivational dimensional model of affect on the basis of a series of studies. The model posited that emotion included three dimensions: emotional valence, arousal and motivation. Gable and Harmon-Jones proposed that affect low in approach motivation(joy, sadness) can broaden the cognitive; affect high in approach motivation(desire and fear) can narrow the cognitive. The studies have also confirmed that different motivation intensity of emotion have different influence on attentional scope, cognitive classification, cognitive control and the working memory, etc. However, source memory research was less in this area. Therefore, the present research took depression tendency college students as the object, designed three experiments to explore the issue. In study 1, approach motivation of positive affects was evoked by monetary incentive delay paradigm, the Chinese characters was presented 200 ms and participants didn’t need to remember the Chinese characters and its color. In study 2 and 3, approach motivation of positive affects and avoidance motivation of negative affects were evoked respectively by Positive and negative pictures. Chinese characters show 800 ms, and participants were asked to remember the Chinese characters and its color. In the three studies, source memory was examined by a three key judgment paradigm. Group was considered as the factor of between groups, motivation types and source types were treated as within-subject variable. Results and conclusions are as follows:(1)The results of study 1:Relative to normal group, depression group has higher accuracy rate of source memory(p<0.05).Relative to high approach-motivated group, low approach-motivated group has significantly higher accuracy rate of source memory(p<0.01).(2) The results of study 2: There is no significant difference between normal group and depression group in the accuracy rate of source memory(p>0.05). Relative to neutral group, low approach-motivated group has higher accuracy rate of source memory(p<0.05); relative to high approach-motivated group, low approach-motivated group has significantly higher accuracy rate of source memory(p<0.01).(3) The results of study 3:There is no significant difference between normal group and depression group in the accuracy rate of source memory(p>0.05).Relative to high avoid-motivated group, low avoid-motivated group has significantly higher accuracy rate of source memory(p<0.01).Difference between high avoid-motivated group and neutral group is borderline significant.The research conclusion:(1)Depressed mood can improve source memory with conditions.(2) Compared with high approached-motivation positive emotion, low approached-motivation positive emotion has better effect of source memory.(3) Compared with high avoided-motivation negative emotion, low avoided-motivation negative emotion has better effect of source memory.(4) Affect low in approach motivation can improve source memory; affect high in avoid motivation can damage source memory.