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

equired participants to distinguish between which items they ‘Remember’ and
which items were ‘Known’ (Ochsner, 2000). In contrast, recollection has been
found to be impaired by negative emotion when measurements were based on a
paradigm which required participants to identify in which half of the study
phase an item had initially appeared (Aupee, 2007).
Section 3. Emotion and memory
Section 3.1 What influence can emotion have on memory?
Feelings of emotion accompany many events experienced in life and
can influence the memories of these events. Memories of traumatic and
upsetting events may appear to be vivid and clear but on closer inspection there
may only be some aspects of the event for which the accuracy of memory is
enhanced, whilst other aspects of the event may be completely forgotten
(Wagenaar & Groeneweg, 1990). Emotion clearly has an effect on memory,
but there is no agreement in the literature on whether its effects are enhancing
(e.g. Ochsner, 2000) or detrimental (e.g. Aupee, 2007). We need to be able to
define and predict in which conditions memory is enhanced and in which
conditions it is impaired by emotion, in order to understand the mechanisms by
which memory is influenced. Memory is not a single unified process and the
effects of emotion on memory have been examined for different processes
(encoding, consolidation or retrieval) and using different assessments (e.g.
recognition, free recall) (see Fox, 2008 for a recent review). Before we can
hope to understand the overall effect of emotion on memory we first need to
understand the effects it has on any one of the processes.
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