Evidence map›Paper›PMID 28910126›Full record

ArticleJournal of experimental psychology. General2018

Negative emotional content disrupts the coherence of episodic memories.

James A Bisby, Aidan J Horner, Daniel Bush, Neil Burgess

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
45citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

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.

2 · The registry

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.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

45 citing papers in PubMed.

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  11. The Relative Contributions of Traits and Contexts on Social Network Learning.Open mind : discoveries in cognitive science · 2025
    Article
  12. Article
  13. Article
  14. Agency effects on the binding of event elements in episodic memory.Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) · 2024
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

James A BisbyInstitute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London.ORCID 0000-0002-5334-3969
Aidan J HornerDepartment of Psychology, University of York.ORCID 0000-0003-0882-9756
Daniel BushInstitute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London.
Neil BurgessInstitute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London.ORCID 0000-0003-0646-6584

Funding

European Research CouncilMedical Research Council G0300117Medical Research Council G1002276Wellcome Trust 202805/Z/16/Z
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Events are thought to be stored in episodic memory as coherent representations, in which the constituent elements are bound together so that a cue can trigger reexperience of all elements via pattern completion. Negative emotional content can strongly influence memory, but opposing theories predict strengthening or weakening of memory coherence. Across a series of experiments, participants imagined a number of person-location-object events with half of the events including a negative element (e.g., an injured person), and memory was tested across all within event associations. We show that the presence of a negative element reduces memory for associations between event elements, including between neutral elements encoded after a negative element. The presence of a negative element reduces the coherence with which a multimodal event is remembered. Our results, supported by a computational model, suggest that coherent retrieval from neutral events is supported by pattern completion, but that negative content weakens associative encoding which impairs this process. Our findings have important implications for understanding the way traumatic events are encoded and support therapeutic strategies aimed at restoring associations between negative content and its surrounding context. (PsycINFO Database Record

Indexed as

Memory, EpisodicAdolescentAdultComputer SimulationEmotionsFemaleHumansImaginationMaleMental RecallModels, PsychologicalYoung Adult

Identifiers

PMID28910126
PMCPMC5784934

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Registered trials

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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.