Valence does not affect serial recall

Abstract

Despite being the prototypical test of short-term/working memory, immediate serial recall is affected by numerous lexical and long-term memory factors. Within this large literature, very few studies have examined whether performance on the task is affected by valence, the extent to which a word is viewed as positive or negative. Whereas the NEVER model (Bowen, Kark, & Kensinger, 2018) makes the general prediction that negative words will be remembered better than positive words, two previous studies using serial recall have reported that positive words are better remembered than negative words. Three experiments reassessed whether valence affects immediate serial recall using stimuli equated on multiple dimensions, including both arousal and dominance. Over the 3 experiments, with 3 different sets of stimuli, we found no differences in either accuracy or various error measures as a function of valence. The data suggest that there is no effect of valence on an immediate serial recall task when potentially confounding dimensions are controlled. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).