Schedule of Events | Search Abstracts | Invited Symposia | Symposia | Poster Sessions | Data Blitz

Sketchpad Series 

Emotion as a factor of episodic content to predict vividness of memories

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Alexa Lloyd¹ (), Alexa Tompary, PhD¹; ¹Drexel University

Typically, emotion is not analyzed as a component of a remembered event but rather investigated as a global influence on memory. This study will investigate how emotion, as a component of memory, contributes to the vividness of an episodic memory and whether the level of detail in memory for emotional content leads other elements, such as spatial information, to contribute less to feelings of vividness relative to neutral memories. Participants will be presented with a theme word, acting as a retrieval cue. Paired with the word will be a picture of an object, a location, and a face displaying an emotion. Participants will be tested for the gist and the details of each element of memory and asked questions about vividness. We hypothesize that reported vividness will correlate with the gist of memory for neutral elements, such as the encoded object and location. However, when participants have a detailed memory of the emotion, it may serve as a retrieval cue, increasing feelings of vividness as a result of being prioritized over other elements. This project may shift the way emotion is considered in memory, and the approach of studying emotion as a component of a memory with similar properties to other elements (e.g. objects, people, places) may open new avenues to explore and fully understand episodic memory.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic