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

the background when presented later in isolation. All backgrounds were
emotionally neutral and therefore we would have expected any evidence for
implicit memory to be manifested by an increased preference for backgrounds
that had initially been presented with a positive object and a decreased
preference for those presented with a negative object. These findings are not
consistent with our prediction that there would be some implicit memory of the
association between objects and backgrounds. These findings are not consistent
with theories proposing a role for implicit memory mechanisms in the
relationship between emotion and memory (e.g. Barry et al., 2004), however, it
may be that the relationship between preference, memory and emotion is more
complex and has been masked by additional factors. The lack of emotional
influence on preference judgements found in this experiment is similar to the
findings of preference in Chapter 2 where there was no influence of prior
exposure on preference for emotional or neutral stimuli. It is possible that it is
difficult to uncover influences on preference that are independent of any prior
knowledge and opinions of the participants and that the types of stimuli used in
this thesis are too complex to uncover such differences.
The findings of association memory and preference for the backgrounds
are not consistent with the predictions which we made and suggest that these
factors are not related to the visual memory specificity found with negative and
positive emotion. This experiment found no evidence for two possible
explanations of enhanced visual memory specificity by positive emotion,
namely increased associative memory and some form of implicit memory.
Therefore, Experiment 9 was conducted to examine the possibility that
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