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

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Chapter 5 – Which alternatives to attention focusing could explain<br />

emotional enhancement of visual memory specificity?<br />

Section 1. Chapter Introduction<br />

In this chapter we further explore the way in which cognitive processes<br />

may be affected by emotion and lead to the enhancement of memory for<br />

specific visual details. From chapter 4 we concluded that the focusing of<br />

attention onto the source of emotion was an important factor in the process of<br />

enhancement of memory by negative emotion but not by positive emotion.<br />

However, there have been studies of memory for central and peripheral<br />

information which have not supported the attentional narrowing hypothesis<br />

(e.g. Libkuman, Nichols-Whitehead, Griffith, & Thomas, 1999; Wessel, van<br />

der Kooy, & Merckelbach, 2000).<br />

In this chapter we firstly replicate the finding of attention narrowing<br />

from chapter 4 and then investigate whether any other measures of memory<br />

performance reveal further insight into the process by which emotion<br />

influences memory for specific visual details. We then consider the influence<br />

of any carry-over of emotion that might occur between stimuli, the unexpected<br />

nature of emotional stimuli and the distinctiveness of emotional stimuli. These<br />

are all other potential factors which may in some way be responsible for the<br />

emotional enhancement of memory for specific visual details. We will now<br />

consider the relevant literature for each of these different possibilities.<br />

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