Emotional arousal does not enhance association-memory

Emotionally arousing information is remembered better than neutral information. This enhancement effect has been shown for memory for items. In contrast, studies of association-memory have found both impairments and enhancements of association-memory by arousal. We aimed to resolve these conflicting results by using a cued-recall paradigm combined with a model-based data analysis method (Madan, Glaholt, & Caplan, 2010) that simultaneously obtains separate estimates of arousal effects on memory for associations and memory for items. Participants studied sequentially presented words in pairs that were pure (NEGATIVE–NEGATIVE or NEUTRAL–NEUTRAL) or mixed (NEGATIVE–NEUTRAL or NEUTRAL–NEGATIVE). Cued recall tests had NEUTRAL or NEGATIVE probes and NEUTRAL or NEGATIVE targets. We found impaired memory for associations involving negative words despite enhanced item-memory (more retrievable targets). A category-list control condition explained away the item-memory enhancement but could not explain the impairment of association-memory due to arousal. A second experiment with identical structure but using higher arousing taboo words revealed increased cued recall of taboo than neutral words. However, this was exclusively mediated by item-memory effects with neither enhancement nor impairment of association-memory. Thus, although cued recall was lower for pure negative pairs and higher for pure taboo pairs, our modeling approach determined a different locus of action for these memory impairing or increasing effects: Although item memory was increased by arousal, association-memory was impaired by moderately arousing, negative words and unaffected by taboo words. Our results suggest that previous results reporting an enhancement of association-memory due to arousal may have instead been solely driven by enhanced item-memory.

► Cued recall of word pairs tests not just association-memory but also item-memory.
► With a model-based analysis, we isolated item- and association effects on emotional memory.
► Negative words decreased cued recall by lowering association-memory.
► Taboo words increased cued recall, but only by enhancing item-memory.
► Emotional enhancement of verbal memory relies on item- but not association-memory.