The Role of Emotions in Memory Building - Essay Example

Furthermore, while both emotion and cognition are implicated in encoding events into memory, they are still difficult to distinguish from one another. Although understanding the role of emotions and cognition in memory building has been a mainstream research topic, the emphasis has shifted to studying their combined roles in mental processing. The relationship between both emotional and episodic memory is thus a highly charged subject of study. Dynamic memory is triggered by emotions, while episodic memory involves the conscious remembering of the details of an event.

Tulving and Szpunar (2009) point out that episodic memory is one of the chief cognitive activities made possible by the brain. It is an extraordinary fact that emotionally arousing events are more likely to be remembered than emotionally neutral events. The focus of attention and capacity to recall is also different in the two types of events. In emotionally arousing circumstances, affect-laden detail is the centre of attention rather than peripheral. For instance, a study reported that subjects are likelier to remember the focal detail than the peripheral details of an emotionally arousing image.

Moreover, the details of items that are perceived negatively are remembered more than the details of positively perceived items. For instance, in the study just discussed, subjects could recognise the details better when shown an image of a snake rather than a gown or a cake. Another interesting observation is that when an event is accompanied by positive emotion, there is less confidence in the recall ability of such an event. Demonstrating this phenomenon, a 2004 study by Levine and Black published in the journal Cognition and Emotion showed that when a recognition test was conducted on participants of the famous O. J. Simpson murder trial, those who perceived the verdict positively were more likely to believe that the events were fictitious than those who were angry with the ruling.

Thus, both emotional and episodic memory are highly cooperative, yet they are believed to be very distinct in terms of anatomy and function. For efficient recalling of an event, the event is first ‘encoded’ and then transformed into an appropriate representation (consolidation), followed by a ‘retrieval’ of that representation. Evidence suggests that these three processes are enhanced when an event is emotionally arousing, resulting in better recall (MacLeod and Mathews, 2004).

Moreover, a study published in Psychological Science by LaBar and Phelps (1998) has shown that emotionally arousing events are often secured as long-term memories while non-emotionally arousing events are forgotten quickly. Neurobiological studies by LaBar and Cabeza (2006) have demonstrated that in the circumstances with emotionally laden stimuli, the encoding and consolidation processes are enhanced due to a more active functioning of the amygdala. Supporting this further and reinforcing the role of emotion in memory, a previous study showed that the amygdala's interaction with the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex enhances memory.

Buchanan (2007) reviewed a number of animal studies that showed that emotion has a very significant influence on the recall of episodic memory events. His paper further contended a deep cooperation between emotional and serial memory systems. Offering a different aspect to this study is the ‘affect infusion model’ (AIM) as described by Bower & Forgas in the book Affect, Memory and Social Cognition. This model suggests that emotion and cognition infuse more readily when participants are subjected to free recall exercises rather than more controlled experimental procedures. In an investigation by Teasdale and Russell (1983) that aimed to study the effect of mood manipulation on the recall-ability of words, it was shown that subjects induced with a positive mood better recalled positive words, those generated with negative attitudes better remembered negative comments while neutral words were found to be immune to induced spirit. There is evident cooperation between episodic and emotional memory systems.