Affective State And DRM Paradigm:an Investigation Of The Effect Of Valence And Arousal On False Memory

With the development of false memory research, affective state, as one of the most important factor which can modulate cognitive processing, has attracted many attentions. Among several theories, Affect-as-Information Hypothesis was strongly supported. The theory posits that affect influences how people process information. Positive affective cues encourage relational processing during encoding, which can enhance false memory effects. On the other hand, negative affective cues encourage item-specific processing at encoding, which can discourage false memory effects. However, the theory states that "negative affective cues reduce false memory by enhancing item-specific processing and suppressing relational processing", which lacks direct evidence. In addition, so far, it is still little known about the effect of arousal on false memory because of a lack of research.In this study, two experiments were designed to investigate the influence of emotional valence and arousal on false memories. In study 1, three groups of participants were successfully induced in positive, negative, and neutral affective states respectively. And then they were asked to complete a Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false-memory task.List items were presented in three specific colors to serve as measures for item-specific processing. In addition, false recognition of critical lures were served as measures for relational processing. It was found that positive affective state had increased false recognition of critical lures and worse veridical memories for word colors; whereas negative affective state had reduced false recognition of critical lures and better veridical memories for word colors.Study 2 extended the findings of Study 1 by investigating the influence of affect arousal on false memory. Participants were asked to listen to certain music and recall concerning experiences. Then they were successfully induced in four different affective states:happy (positive with high arousal), calm (negative with low arousal), anxiety (negative with high arousal), and sad (negative with low arousal) respectively. The results showed that the interaction between valence and arousal affected false memory.The main conclusions of the study are as follows:(1) Compared to positive and neutral affective states, negative affective state reduces false memories and improves the memories of details.(2) The influence of valence on false memory is due to the effect on people’s dominant cognitive processing. People in positive affective state tend to relational processing whereas people in negative affective state tend to item-specific processing.(3) The interaction between valence and arousal influences false memory. For positive affective states, with the increase of arousal, happy group (positive with high arousal) has more false memories than serene group (positive with low arousal); conversely, for negative affective states, with the increase of arousal, there are no differences between anxiety group (negative with high arousal) and sad group (negative with low arousal) in false memories.