Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MSc)

Department

Psychology

Program Name/Specialization

Cognitive Neuroscience

Faculty/School

Faculty of Science

First Advisor

Dr. William Hockley

Advisor Role

Advisor/Co-author

Abstract

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.

Convocation Year

2015

Convocation Season

Spring

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