The Non-monotonic Effect Of Emotional Valence And Arousal On Associative Memory

In our daily life,memory is everywhere.As a basic mental process,memory is closely related to other mental activities.The effect of emotion on associative memory has received extensive attention in recent years,but different studies have reached inconsistent conclusions.Some theories explain this,such as the attention narrowing theory,the priority binding theory,Mather's object-based binding theory,etc.From the attention bias or processing style differences caused by emotional valence or arousal level,these theories come to the conclusion that emotion can enhance the within-item associative memory and weaken the between-item associative memory.Boywitt(2015)studied the influence of arousal level on the associative memory of pictures' border color and position.He used low,medium and high levels of emotional arousal stimulation,and found that memory for the location of pictures followed an inverted u-shaped function.That is,the memory of the position of the pictures was the best under the medium level of arousal.His research shows that the relationship between emotional arousal and associative memory is neither a single linear relationship,nor is it uniform across different contextual features.Based on the above results,we speculated that the different results of the effect of emotion on associative memory in previous studies might be related to the fact that the effect of emotion on associative memory itself is a complex and non-monotonic relationship.That is,the effect of emotion on associative memory is not singular,the results of different studies may be due to the detection of the effects of different emotional valences or different arousal levels.Therefore,based on the study of Boywitt(2015),this study further investigated the effects of different emotional valences on associative memory under different arousal levels.Taking the valence and arousal level as the factors of the influence of emotion on the associative memory toexamine the complex effect of emotional valence and arousal level on associative memory.So as to verify whether the effect of different valences and arousal levels on the associative memory are non-monotonic,and respectively explore the within-item associative memory and the between-item associative memory,in order to broaden the research scope of emotion on associative memory.The study consisted of two experiments.Experiment 1 investigates the subjects' associative memory of the emotional picture and the color of the border around the picture,and explores the influence of emotional valence and arousal level on the within-item associative memory.Experiment 2 investigates the subjects' associative memory of emotional pictures and complex neutral objects,and explores the influence of emotional valence and arousal level on the between-item associative memory.Both experiment 1 and experiment 2 use a 3(emotional valence: positive,neutral and negative)× 3(emotional arousal level: low,medium and high)within-subjects design.Both emotional valence and emotional arousal level are within-subjects variables.The dependent variables are the recognition accuracy of the original frame color of the picture,the recognition accuracy of the color of the border around the picture(experiment 1)and the recognition accuracy of the neutral object associated with the picture(experiment 2).The study came to the following conclusions:1.Emotional valence and arousal level have no significant effect on the within-item associative memory of the picture's border color and the associative memory of the border color is not enhanced or weakened by the change in valence or arousal level.2.The effect of emotional valence and arousal level on between-item associative memory between pictures and neutral objects is indeed not a monotonic or linear relationship.Under the combined action of the two,memory is affected in different directions.Under different arousal conditions,the same emotional valence has different effects on associative memory;Under different valence conditions,the same emotional arousal level has different effects on associative memory.3.The effects of emotional valence and arousal level on different associationtypes are different,and there is a non-monotonic effect on between-item associative memory,but has no effect on within-item associative memory.