Study Of Emotional Factors On Working Memory In Rats

The study of Emotion and Memory is one of the key domains of emotion and cognitive research. Emotional memory related with many topics such as individual development, behavior, perception, believes, goals, self-concept, and mental health. Previous studies believe that the emotion really affect memory. However, some of them think the emotion impede the memory, another consider the emotion promote the memory. And , negative emotional memory and emotional arousal levels were emphasized but positive one and valence emotional were not. In this Paper,we manipulate emotional arousal levels and emotional valence to explore the influence of emotion on memory from emotional content and emotional state. Two studies were in our data collection part.Experiment 1: The study of emotional content. Using the"study-recall"canonical form, the experimenters study and remember the words different in valence (positive/negative) and arousal levels (high/low) without emotional arousal. Then we statistic the memory record to find how the valence (positive/negative)and arousal levels (high/low) of emotional content affect the working memory. As result, the arousal level is determinant in emotional words; the valence is determinant between the emotional and neutral ones.Experiment 2: The study of emotional state. Using"study-recall"canonical form, the experimenters are divided in three groups with positive arousal, negative arousal and no arousal. Through the memory records of the three groups different in emotional state, we can judge how the emotional states affect the working memory. As result, negative emotional state and emotional arousal will impede the working memory, but the moderate emotional arousal will promote the memory record.We divide the emotional factor into emotional content and emotional state, and explore the effect on working memory in arousal level and valence separately. It has positive significance to develop a new method to study the relationship between emotion and memory, and clues to founding the rules of emotional memory. Keywords: emotional content, emotional state, valence, arousal level...