Trade-off Effect Of Intentional Forgetting In Emotional Pictures

In recent years, intentional forgetting of negative emotion has been a research hotspot. Theresearchers used directed forgetting paradigm, and took emotional pictures as experimentalmaterial, the results showed that the neutral pictures appeared better intentional forgetting, andthe conclusions of intentional forgetting of emotional pictures were inconsistent. Kensinger et al(2007b) found that individual viewed the real scene images. They appeared thecentral/peripheral trade-off, whereby enhanced memory for emotional items often came at thecost of memory for surrounding background information. This study used simple item picturesand complex scene pictures as experimental materials to examine the trade-off effect from theintentional forgetting angle, and explored influence of intentional forgetting between center itemand peripheral background, the relationship between visual attention and memory performanceof the center item and peripheral background.In the study,108undergraduates participated and three experiments were conducted:Experiment l studied the intentional forgetting of simple item pictures in the short and longpresentation time, which adopted2(valence: negative, neutral)×2(indicator: remember, forget)×2(presentation time:500ms,2000ms) mixed factorial design, valence and indicator werewithin subject design and presentation time was a between subject design; Experiment2usedcomplex emotional scene pictures, each scene consists of a negative or neutral item and aneutral, positive or negative background, studied trade-off effect of complex scenes intentionalforgetting, tested whether emotion congruence lead to the central/peripheral trade-off or not,which adopted (item emotion: neutral, negative)×3(background emotion: neutral, positive,negative)×2(indicator: remember, forget)×2(presentation time:500ms,2000ms) mixedfactorial design, item emotion, background emotion and indicator were within subject designand presentation time was a between subject design; Experiment3controlled the location ofitem in the background, used eye movement monitoring as an index of overt attention allocation,2(item emotion: neutral, negative)×3(background emotion: neutral, positive, negative)×2(item location: around, center)×2(indicator: remember, forget) are within subject design, total fixation time, fixation count, first fixation time and recognition accuracy as the dependentvariable, explored the impact of attention in the item and background memory.Results of the three experiments indicated that:1、Intentional forgetting of scene different component was not same, item recognition showedintentional forgetting, and the background not, it showed the central/peripheral trade-off effectof intentional forgetting;2、Emotion congruence promoted background memory, and had no effect on the item memory,furthermore, the congruence could not explain the central/peripheral trade-off effect;3、 The item location affected the memory of the item and background, appeared theitem/background trade-off phenomenon which was resulted from item location: middle itemrecognition was better than surrounding item, background presented with surrounding itemrecognition was better than background presented with middle item;4、Individual viewing scenes exhibited selective item memory, with increasing stimuluspresentation time, the attention to the background increased;5、Now it seems that attention narrowing caused by emotional item was the most likely ultimatereason of the central/peripheral trade-off effect.