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The Effect of Emotional Valence on Directed Forgetting and Source Memory

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 5:00 – 7:00 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Bianka Bernhofer¹, James Randle¹; ¹Arden University, UK

Emotional memories have been subject to many investigations, often showing enhanced retention and resistance to forgetting compared to neutral memories. However, there is a theoretical paucity of behavioral research addressing the contextual details surrounding these memories and distinguishing between item memory and any information associated with memory acquisition, namely source memory. This study sought to investigate whether source memory judgements would be based on how much context is available when items are recognized, which was hypothesized to be influenced by the valence of the item. In this study, 27 participants viewed 72 nouns followed by a cue indicating whether it should be remembered or forgotten. The cue type was used as a contextual detail and treated as a source. At test, participants made old/new judgements for 108 words and, for words identified as old, provided remember/know and source memory responses. Results suggest that response bias manipulations affected old/new as well as remember/know judgements and made participants more likely to respond old and remember to negative words compared to neutral words. This could be explained by a misinterpretation of the greater fluency of negative words. Source memory did not differ significantly across valences which could be related to the type of source that was tested or indicate that item and source memory depend on different processing. The outcomes have implications in a number of real-world scenarios such as in clinical settings involving negative memories, in assessing the reliability of eyewitness testimony and in fields like education and marketing.

Topic Area: EMOTION & SOCIAL: Emotion-cognition interactions