PDF (PhD Thesis Susan Chipchase) - Nottingham eTheses ...

of an attentional encoding explanation, either pre-attentive processing or post-
stimulus elaboration could explain the results; however, support for these
theories has not been found (Hulse, Allan, Memon, & Read, 2007; Libkuman,
Stabler, & Otani, 2004). Although at the time Christianson et al.’s (1991)
research was pioneering in the measure of eye movements, the technology
limited the design in a number of ways; it allowed analysis of eye movements
on only one critical scene per participant, and the number, position and location
of eye fixations had to be determined by watching a slow motion video of the
scene with the fixation spot superimposed onto the original stimuli and
manually indicating whether fixations were central or peripheral to the scene
and indicating the start/stop time for fixations. This methodology may have
reduced accuracy of the eye movement measurements, and in combination with
data from only one viewing instance per participant, may limit the
generalisability of the findings.
Christianson et al. (1991) provided some measure of categorical
comparison between memory for central and peripheral aspects of the scene,
but the involvement of attention in memory for details within those categories
is still not clear and a number of predictions could be made from previous
literature. The research by Kensinger and colleagues using memory specificity
paradigms is a rare example in the literature of a systematic examination of the
influence of emotion on memory. We will measure attention at the time of
encoding to examine how the spatial distribution of attention is involved in this
emotional enhancement of memory. Based on Kensinger’s research and
arguments that negative emotions lead to a narrowing of attention whilst
positive emotions lead to a broadening of attention (Fredrickson, 2001; Freitas
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