The Effects of Emotion, Age, and Mental State on Memory

Read the full article See related articles

Discuss this preprint

Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?

Listed in

This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.
Log in to save this article

Abstract

This study investigated the complex interplay between age, affect, and memory. Participants read a set of four fictional narratives and were asked to recall them at four different time points over the span of a month. In addition to the recall task, each participant also completed various measures of affect and working memory. Analyses found age-related deficits in general and working memory, and enhancements in the positivity of episodic memory. Affect at encoding and recall did not appear to have an effect on the valence of memory, nor did state (transient) anxiety. However, trait (dispositional) anxiety did have a significant effect on episodic memory, seemingly increasing positively-rated details and simultaneously decreasing negatively-rated details in participants’ responses. There was an interesting sex-specific effect of depression scores on episodic memory in men, in which higher scores were associated with increased negatively-valenced memory. The methods used in this study and proposed alterations would help to further elucidate the role of age, gender, and affect on general and episodic memory.

Article activity feed