Trial reportLearning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)2011
Is all motivation good for learning? Dissociable influences of approach and avoidance motivation in declarative memory.
Trial report in Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.), 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed.
- Prioritizing Detailed Item Memories Through Post-Encoding Motivation Requires Consolidation.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2026Article
- Goal orientation shifts attentional focus and impairs reward-motivated memory.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- The effects of shared, depression-specific, and anxiety-specific internalizing symptoms on negative and neutral episodic memories following post-learning sleep.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- The effect of reward-induced arousal on the success and precision of episodic memory retrieval.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Threat impairs flexible use of a cognitive map.Motivation and emotion · 2023Article
- Induction of spatial anxiety in a virtual navigation environment.Behavior research methods · 2023Article
- Instructed motivational states bias reinforcement learning and memory formation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Computer Programming E-Learners' Personality Traits, Self-Reported Cognitive Abilities, and Learning Motivating Factors.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Associations between Depression, Anxiety, Fatigue, and Learning Motivating Factors in e-Learning-Based Computer Programming Education.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Affective Modulation of Working Memory Maintenance: The Role of Positive and Negative Emotions.Advances in cognitive psychology · 2021Article
- The influence of rewards on incidental memory: more does not mean better.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2020Article
- Greater learning transfer effect for avoidance of loss than for achievement of gain in Finnish and Russian schoolchildren.Heliyon · 2020Article
- Effects ofJournal of medicinal food · 2020Article
- Age-related differences in the goals and concerns that motivate real-life prospective memory tasks.PloS one · 2019Article
- Acute stress throughout the memory cycle: Diverging effects on associative and item memory.Journal of experimental psychology. General · 2019Article
- How the Brain Converts Negative Evaluation into Performance Facilitation.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2018Article
- Context and Time Matter: Effects of Emotion and Motivation on Episodic Memory Overtime.Neural plasticity · 2018Article
- Dynamic Influence of Emotional States on Novel Word Learning.Frontiers in psychology · 2018Article
- Motivational valence alters memory formation without altering exploration of a real-life spatial environment.PloS one · 2018Article
- Distinct medial temporal networks encode surprise during motivation by reward versus punishment.Neurobiology of learning and memory · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The present study investigated the effects of approach versus avoidance motivation on declarative learning. Human participants navigated a virtual reality version of the Morris water task, a classic spatial memory paradigm, adapted to permit the experimental manipulation of motivation during learning. During this task, participants were instructed to navigate to correct platforms while avoiding incorrect platforms. To manipulate motivational states participants were either rewarded for navigating to correct locations (approach) or punished for navigating to incorrect platforms (avoidance). Participants' skin conductance levels (SCLs) were recorded during navigation to investigate the role of physiological arousal in motivated learning. Behavioral results revealed that, overall, approach motivation enhanced and avoidance motivation impaired memory performance compared to nonmotivated spatial learning. This advantage was evident across several performance indices, including accuracy, learning rate, path length, and proximity to platform locations during probe trials. SCL analysis revealed three key findings. First, within subjects, arousal interacted with approach motivation, such that high arousal on a given trial was associated with performance deficits. In addition, across subjects, high arousal negated or reversed the benefits of approach motivation. Finally, low-performing, highly aroused participants showed SCL responses similar to those of avoidance-motivation participants, suggesting that for these individuals, opportunities for reward may evoke states of learning similar to those typically evoked by threats of punishment. These results provide a novel characterization of how approach and avoidance motivation influence declarative memory and indicate a critical and selective role for arousal in determining how reinforcement influences goal-oriented learning.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.