Violent and sexual media impair second-language memory during encoding and retrieval

•We examine effects of violent and sexual media on foreign language memory in Turkey.•Exposure to violent and sexual media impairs foreign language memory.•Memory impairments occur during encoding and retrieval.

Research suggests that exposure to media containing violence and sex impairs attention and memory. Learning a foreign language is one domain in which attention and memory are critical. Two experiments addressed whether exposure to media containing violence and sex interferes with foreign-language performance. Turkish participants (NExperiment 1 = 70, NExperiment 2 = 76) completed a foreign-language performance task before and after viewing a video. By random assignment, participants watched either a video containing violence and sex or a video containing no violence or sex. In both experiments, the two groups did not differ on pretest performance, but participants exposed to violence and sex performed worse on the posttest (Experiment 1: English; Experiment 2: Spanish), and on a delayed test one week later (Experiment 2). These results suggest that participants exposed to violence and sex allocated attentional resources to violent and sexual cues in their videos rather than to the foreign language material.