TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wirkner, Janine
A1  - Ventura-Bort, Carlos
A1  - Schulz, Paul
A1  - Hamm, Alfons O.
A1  - Weymar, Mathias
T1  - Event-related potentials of emotional and neutral memories
T2  - Psychophysiology : journal of the Society for Psychophysiological Research
N2  - Previous research found that memory is not only better for emotional information but also for neutral information that has been encoded in the context of an emotional event. In the present ERP study, we investigated two factors that may influence memory for neutral and emotional items: temporal proximity between emotional and neutral items during encoding, and retention interval (immediate vs. delayed). Forty-nine female participants incidentally encoded 36 unpleasant and 108 neutral pictures (36 neutral pictures preceded an unpleasant picture, 36 followed an unpleasant picture, and 36 neutral pictures were preceded and followed by neutral pictures) and participated in a recognition memory task either immediately (N=24) or 1 week (N=25) after encoding. Results showed better memory for emotional pictures relative to neutral pictures. In accordance, enhanced centroparietal old/new differences (500-900 ms) during recognition were observed for unpleasant compared to neutral pictures, most pronounced for the 1-week interval. Picture position effects, however, were only subtle. During encoding, late positive potentials for neutral pictures were slightly lower for neutral pictures following unpleasant ones, but only at trend level. To summarize, we could replicate and extend previous ERP findings showing that emotionally arousing events are better recollected than neutral events, particularly when memory is tested after longer retention intervals. Picture position during encoding, however, had only small effects on elaborative processing and no effects on memory retrieval.
KW  - attention
KW  - emotion
KW  - ERPs
KW  - memory
KW  - old
KW  - new effect
KW  - serial position effect
Y1  - 2018
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/52694
SN  - 0048-5772
SN  - 1469-8986
VL  - 55
IS  - 7
PB  - Wiley
CY  - Hoboken
ER  -