Are affective events richly recollected or simply familiar? The experience and process of recognizing feelings past.
Abstract
The author used the remember/know paradigm and the dual process recognition model of A. P. Yonelinas, N. E. A. Kroll, I. Dobbins, M. Lazzara, and R. T. Knight (1998) to study the states of awareness accompanying recognition of affective images and the processes of recollection and familiarity that may underlie them. Results from all experiments showed that (a) negative stimuli tended to be remembered, whereas positive stimuli tended to be known; (b) recollection, but not familiarity, was boosted for negative or highly arousing and, to a lesser extent, positive stimuli; and (c) across experiments, variations in depth of encoding did not influence these patterns. These data suggest that greater recollection for affective events leads them to be more richly experienced in memory, and they are consistent with the idea that the states of remembering and knowing are experientially exclusive, whereas the processes underlying them are functionally independent.
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Emotional events are preferentially encoded compared to neutral events.
“As far as internal autobiographical memory is concerned, it is well known, for instance, that emotional events are preferentially encoded compared to neutral events (Ochsner, 2000;Qasim et al., 2023)”
From Understanding Autobiographical Memory in the Digital Age: The AMEDIA-Model (2024) · cites this paper as Ochsner, 2000
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Understanding Autobiographical Memory in the Digital Age: The AMEDIA-Model
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- Authors
- Ochsner, K. N.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Ochsner, Kevin N.
- ORCID
- Ochsner, Kevin N.
- Venue
- Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
- Published
- 2000
- Volume
- 129
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 242-261
- ISSN
- 0096-3445 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-2222
- OpenAlex
- W2140517394
- Cited by
- 704
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 22 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 37 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 26 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 30 · 2016: 34 · 2015: 40 · 2014: 31 · 2013: 47 · 2012: 46
- FWCI
- 3.04
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Experimental Psychology General (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Aging (AG 08441)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Identity, Memory, and Therapy
- Keywords
- emotional memory, recollection, familiarity, remember/know paradigm, emotional arousal, negative stimuli, positive stimuli, memory awareness
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Affect, Arousal, Female, Galvanic Skin Response, Humans, Male, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Mental Recall, Retention, Psychology, Students
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