Shock and Awe Memory Enhancement

Viewing a war-torn country, a devastating car wreck or a cattle slaughterhouse are difficult things to see. Strangely, new research indicates that they may help "lock in" just recently learned data.

Bridgid Finn, PhD, postdoctoral researcher in psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) reports that learning is enhanced by negative emotion, not diminished by that negative emotion. Memory is reactive and dynamic, not stagnant.

Seeing shocking scenes actually enhances memory retention.

The finding feels counterintuitive. One would think that viewing a negative scene would tend to block out anything around the event. That isn't the case though.

Bridgid Finn, PhD, postdoctoral researcher in psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) explains that learning is enhanced by negative emotion, not diminished by that negative emotion. Memory is reactive and dynamic, not stagnant.

Finn offers an example, “Having a picture of a gun pointed at you just after you’ve just been tested on something probably isn’t the best situation for learning, but because there is an intricate relationship between areas involved in emotion and remembering, the amygdala and the hippocampus, we find that the negative picture can enhance later retention.”

The researchers tested 40 undergraduate WUSTL students who studied ten lists of ten pairs of Swahili-English vocabulary words. Participants were given a cued recall test after studying each set of ten pairs, and afterwards given a final test on all 100 pairs.

On the initial test, following each correct answer, one of three picture categories were shown; a picture of either a negative emotional image, a neutral emotional image or an image of a blank screen.

Then their "mental palette" was then cleansed with a one-minute multiplication test.

Participants retested best on items that were followed by negative pictures. A second experiment designed to explore the limits of the enhancement effect, looked at a second group of students who viewed the images two seconds beyond successful retrieval, and found that students continued to process information gathering during this short pause.

A third study was intended to explain the possibility that arousing images associated with provocative words enhance memory collection. This experiment was very similar to the other two with different, study enhancing criteria: Participants restudied the items.

Finn observes that positive images don't necessarily appear to be stored as successfully in the brain as negative content.  The researchers believe that their results mark the first step in understanding the kinds of things that might be beneficial to enhance memory after retrieval.

Finn concludes in saying that establishment of a period after retrieval is key in information retainment. He want to build on this initial finding by observing which manipulations can possibly be introduced to enhance the post-retrieval phase of memory retention.

Henry L. Roediger III, PhD, James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor and dean of academic planning and Finn published these findings in the June 2011 issue of Psychological Science.