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

Alternative measures of memory: Associative Memory & Implicit Memory
In chapter 4 the measurements of memory performance were restricted
to specific and general recognition of objects and backgrounds. Examining
alternative measures of memory performance may provide further insight into
the processes underlying the emotional enhancement of memory for specific
visual details.
Touryan et al. (2007) proposed that emotion may directly influence the
associative binding in memory of an item to peripheral information concerning
that item. They argued that evidence that stress can disrupt hippocampal
processing, a neural structure related to memory formation and binding,
provides support for this proposal. Stress can therefore lead to the creation of
fragmented memories and this may explain the dissociation between memory
for central emotion-eliciting information and peripheral contextual information
(Touryan et al., 2007).
Touryan et al., (2007) examined memory for the association between
central and peripheral elements of negative and neutral events. Peripheral
information was defined as information presented with an event but which was
semantically and spatially separate from that event. Participants viewed
negative emotional and neutral pictures from the IAPS database (Lang et al.,
2001). Peripheral information was a neutral cartoon-like object placed in one
corner of the picture. The peripheral information was spatially and
conceptually disparate from the central event information to reduce the
possibility of pre-existing semantic associations and avoid ambiguous
definitions of which elements of the scenes were central or peripheral. The use
of spatial and conceptually disparate peripheral objects allowed
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