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

associative binding (Touryan et al, 2007). These findings suggest that the
examination of associative memory binding may provide further insight into
the effects of emotion on memory.
In addition to examining associative memory in this chapter we will
also examine a measure of implicit memory. With these type of tasks
performance may indicate recognition in cases when participants may not
necessarily be able to explicitly access this memory. The involvement of
implicit memory mechanisms in emotions’ influence on memory is suggested
by findings of a role for implicit memories in clinical disorders of emotion,
such as depression (Barry, Naus, & Rehm, 2004). The critical link between
memory and preference formation has been directly demonstrated by research
investigating how preference for a neutral object is influenced by memory for
an association between that neutral object and an emotional image (Ghuman &
Bar, 2006). When participants explicitly remembered the affective associations
they were found to prefer neutral shapes that had been associated with positive
images. However, when they did not explicitly remember the affective
associations they preferred neutral shapes that had been associated with
negative images. Ghuman & Bar (2006) proposed that this preference in the
absence of memory for items with a negative association is due to a mechanism
which produces an inherent incentive to rapidly assess potential threats in the
environment.
In this chapter we will examine the influence of a previously embedded
emotional or neutral object on preference for neutral backgrounds. This use of
a preference judgement to assess levels of memory was also used in chapter 2
to assess whether exposure to stimuli affected preference judgements in a mere
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