Memory and emotion: psychological mechanisms and interactions

Psychology

Memory and Emotion

a) Describe how emotion influences memory for details and how non-emotional events are remembered.

When discussing how emotion influences memory there are two different areas that can be looked at. The first is how the emotional content of the information effects memory and the second concerns the effect of ones emotional state on learning and remembering. As a general rule people tend to remember emotionally exciting events better than uninteresting ones. It appears that memories are treated in a different way depending on whether they are connected with pleasant emotions or unpleasant ones, and that this universal rule appears to be affected by age and other personal factors. In particular, pleasant emotions appear to go away more slowly from ones memory than unpleasant emotions. It has been found that among those people who suffer from mild depression, unpleasant and pleasant emotions tend to weaken evenly, while older adults seem to adjust their emotions better than younger people, and may encode less information that is pessimistic (the role of emotion in memory, n.d.).

It has been found that ones emotional state at the time of encoding or retrieving has a tremendous affect on remembering. It is apparent that mood affects what is perceived and encoded. This notion can be reflected in two similar but subtly different effects:

"mood congruence: whereby one remembers events that match their current mood dependence: this refers to the fact that remembering is easier when ones mood at retrieval matches their mood at encoding. Thus, ones chances of remembering an event or fact are greater if they evoke the emotional state they were in at the time of experiencing the event or learning the fact" (the role of emotion in memory, n.d.).

b) There has been a great deal of controversy on whether Freud's theory of repressed memory is even possible. That is, in many laboratory studies the phenomenon of repressed memory cannot be seen. Why would that be the case?

If the concept of repressed memory is true and the mind takes horrible memories and suppresses them deep down only to be retrieved years later then it might be hard to prove this in laboratory studies since only the mind controls when the memories are released. Even though laboratory studies may have good intentions it poses that it would be very difficult to induce the remembrance of repressed memories. It has not been established as of yet what it is that triggers the remembrance of memories that have been repressed so inducing them in a laboratory environment seems next to impossible.

c) With your knowledge, imagine as a future professor how you might be able to help students remember important parts of your lectures.

I know from personal experience that when it comes to remembering things presented in a lecture it is always more helpful if the lecture is interesting and alive. I think that if I were a professor I would do my best to make each of my lectures electric and exciting as possible. It is very important to not only capture your audience's attention but to retain it as well. A lecturer must connect with students and draw them into the lecture. This rapport can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Students must decide how to organize this information in their own minds and notes. The more you can provide students with a framework for interpreting lecture material, the easier it is for them to understand new ideas (How to Create Memorable Lectures, 2005).