ArticleLearning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.)2013
Negative affect impairs associative memory but not item memory.
Article in Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.), 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 58 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
58 citing papers in PubMed.
- Investigating memory for faces based on emotional contextual information.Memory & cognition · 2026Article
- Effect of emotion on hippocampal-dependent associative binding through the lens of the weather prediction task.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Empathy-Mediated Narrative Reconstruction of Autobiographical Memory: An Integrative Review of Theory, Evidence, and Applications.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- Emotional learning selectively distorts the temporal organization of memory: A quantitative synthesis.Cognition · 2026Article
- Associative emotional memory encoding: insights from network stability analysis of an fMRI-driven bilinear dynamics.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2026Article
- Functional loss of PKMζ in the dorsal hippocampus potentiates the time-dependent increase in false contextual fear memory and impairs spatial recognition memory in mice.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2026Article
- Emotional state dynamics impacts temporal memory.Cognition & emotion · 2025Article
- Are multiple types of associative memory differently impacted by emotion?Cognition & emotion · 2025Article
- The rhythm of memory. Does theta frequency audio/visual flicker improve recall?Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- The Relative Contributions of Traits and Contexts on Social Network Learning.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025Article
- Less Than Zero?Experimental psychology · 2025Article
- Positive affect amplifies integration within episodic memories in the laboratory and the real world.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Integrating and fragmenting memories under stress and alcohol.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Article
- How emotional contexts modulate item memory in individuals with high and low negative affect and worry.Learning & memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Disentangling emotional source memory: a mega-analysis on the effects of emotion on item-context binding in episodic long-term memory.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Threat impairs flexible use of a cognitive map.Motivation and emotion · 2023Article
- A direct replication and extension of Popp and Serra (2016, experiment 1): better free recall and worse cued recall of animal names than object names, accounting for semantic similarity.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- The effect of negative emotion processing on spatial navigation: an experimental study using virtual reality.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Altered Resting-State functional connectivity in the anterior and posterior hippocampus in Post-traumatic stress disorder: The central role of the anterior hippocampus.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2023Article
- Threat learning impairs subsequent associative inference.Scientific reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The formation of associations between items and their context has been proposed to rely on mechanisms distinct from those supporting memory for a single item. Although emotional experiences can profoundly affect memory, our understanding of how it interacts with different aspects of memory remains unclear. We performed three experiments to examine the effects of emotion on memory for items and their associations. By presenting neutral and negative items with background contexts, Experiment 1 demonstrated that item memory was facilitated by emotional affect, whereas memory for an associated context was reduced. In Experiment 2, arousal was manipulated independently of the memoranda, by a threat of shock, whereby encoding trials occurred under conditions of threat or safety. Memory for context was equally impaired by the presence of negative affect, whether induced by threat of shock or a negative item, relative to retrieval of the context of a neutral item in safety. In Experiment 3, participants were presented with neutral and negative items as paired associates, including all combinations of neutral and negative items. The results showed both above effects: compared to a neutral item, memory for the associate of a negative item (a second item here, context in Experiments 1 and 2) is impaired, whereas retrieval of the item itself is enhanced. Our findings suggest that negative affect impairs associative memory while recognition of a negative item is enhanced. They support dual-processing models in which negative affect or stress impairs hippocampal-dependent associative memory while the storage of negative sensory/perceptual representations is spared or even strengthened.
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.