A detrimental effect of emotion on picture recollection

Abstract

Several studies indicate that the recollection process, as assessed by the Remember-Know paradigm (Tulving, 1985) is enhanced for emotional stimuli as compared with neutral ones. The goal of this study was to assess the influence of emotion on recollection process, applying the Processes Dissociation Procedure (PDP; Jacoby, 1991) on emotional and neutral pictures. A total of 63 participants (aged 40-78 years) were included in this study, and the PDP was implemented by a list discrimination task. The results indicate that recollection estimate is lower for positive and negative pictures compared with neutral ones. This finding contrasts with others using the Remember-Know procedure (e.g., Ochsner, 2000) but is in agreement with the previously described trade-off effect (e.g., Jurica and Shimamura, 1999).