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Emotional Nuance Enhances Verbatim Retention of Written Materials
Recent studies have demonstrated that details of verbal material are retained in memory. Further, converging evidence points to a memory-enhancing effect of emotion such that memory for emotional events is stronger than memory for neutral events. Building upon this work, it appears likely that verba...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2021
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8236806/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34194352 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.519729 |
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author | Kim, Yoonji Sidtis, Diana Van Lancker Sidtis, John J. |
author_facet | Kim, Yoonji Sidtis, Diana Van Lancker Sidtis, John J. |
author_sort | Kim, Yoonji |
collection | PubMed |
description | Recent studies have demonstrated that details of verbal material are retained in memory. Further, converging evidence points to a memory-enhancing effect of emotion such that memory for emotional events is stronger than memory for neutral events. Building upon this work, it appears likely that verbatim sentence forms will be remembered better when tinged with emotional nuance. Most previous studies have focused on single words. The current study examines the role of emotional nuance in the verbatim retention of longer sentences in written material. In this study, participants silently read transcriptions of spontaneous narratives, half of which had been delivered within a context of emotional expression and the other half with neutral expression. Transcripts were taken from selected narratives that received the highest, most extreme ratings, neutral or emotional. Participants identified written excerpts in a yes/no recognition test. Results revealed that participants’ verbatim memory was significantly greater for excerpts from emotionally nuanced narratives than from neutral narratives. It is concluded that the narratives, pre-rated as emotional or neutral, drove this effect of emotion on verbatim retention. These findings expand a growing body of evidence for a role of emotion in memory, and lend support to episodic theories of language and the constructionist account. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8236806 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-82368062021-06-29 Emotional Nuance Enhances Verbatim Retention of Written Materials Kim, Yoonji Sidtis, Diana Van Lancker Sidtis, John J. Front Psychol Psychology Recent studies have demonstrated that details of verbal material are retained in memory. Further, converging evidence points to a memory-enhancing effect of emotion such that memory for emotional events is stronger than memory for neutral events. Building upon this work, it appears likely that verbatim sentence forms will be remembered better when tinged with emotional nuance. Most previous studies have focused on single words. The current study examines the role of emotional nuance in the verbatim retention of longer sentences in written material. In this study, participants silently read transcriptions of spontaneous narratives, half of which had been delivered within a context of emotional expression and the other half with neutral expression. Transcripts were taken from selected narratives that received the highest, most extreme ratings, neutral or emotional. Participants identified written excerpts in a yes/no recognition test. Results revealed that participants’ verbatim memory was significantly greater for excerpts from emotionally nuanced narratives than from neutral narratives. It is concluded that the narratives, pre-rated as emotional or neutral, drove this effect of emotion on verbatim retention. These findings expand a growing body of evidence for a role of emotion in memory, and lend support to episodic theories of language and the constructionist account. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-06-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8236806/ /pubmed/34194352 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.519729 Text en Copyright © 2021 Kim, Sidtis and Sidtis. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Kim, Yoonji Sidtis, Diana Van Lancker Sidtis, John J. Emotional Nuance Enhances Verbatim Retention of Written Materials |
title | Emotional Nuance Enhances Verbatim Retention of Written Materials |
title_full | Emotional Nuance Enhances Verbatim Retention of Written Materials |
title_fullStr | Emotional Nuance Enhances Verbatim Retention of Written Materials |
title_full_unstemmed | Emotional Nuance Enhances Verbatim Retention of Written Materials |
title_short | Emotional Nuance Enhances Verbatim Retention of Written Materials |
title_sort | emotional nuance enhances verbatim retention of written materials |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8236806/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34194352 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.519729 |
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