memory and emotions

Explicit memory

Participants are aware that they have previously been exposed to the stimulus. → “I remember”

Implicit memory

Influence of prior exposure but without any awareness of the exposure (priming effect – very short exposure). It’s almost never impaired! If we ask clinical patients (amnesic) to do a priming task (word completion), they’re as good as a control group (A=C)

how does implicit memory affect us in our everyday life ?

• Already exists in utero: studies show that if a baby reacts to a music in the womb because the mother listens to it every day, than it’ll also react outside the womb.

• Allows us to learn and develop: we don’t always need to access it.

• Helps us navigate the world

• Changes the way we think and behave For example the “illusion-of-truth effect”

“illusion-of-truth effect”

a person is more likely to believe a familiar statement than an unfamiliar one (because of the feeling of familiarity, repetition, we think it must be true)→ role of implicit memory on “fake news” or stereotypes.

SHORT-TERM MEMORY

• Entry of Information: attentive

• Maintenance: rehearsal

• Format of information: multi-modalities but most often acoustic

• Capacity: small (7 +/- 2 items)

• Forgetting: decay/ interference

• Length of time: 10-30 seconds

• Retrieval: exhaustive serial search

LONG-TERM MEMORY

• Entry of Information: rehearsal, organisation, categorisation

• Maintenance: organisation

• Format of information: multi-model (we can have memory of sense, taste, etc.) and semantic

• Capacity: no known limit

• Forgetting: loss of accessibility

• Length of time: hours, days, years

• Retrieval: organized search or automatic access

Primacy effect

the first few words you learn are going to be the first your recall afterwards (we rehearse those words more often).

Recency effect

the last words are also going to be recalled easily. It is an effect of short-term memory: we have it right now in our mind.

semantic memory

long-term memory store of our knowledge (we know, we don’t remember)

• Conceptual knowledge

• World knowledge (think trivia questions)

• Personal knowledge

• Scripts and schemas/ schemata

Scripts

type of schemata. They are an abstract general memory for the typical activities that occur during routine events

Cognitive economy

main role of semantic memory. It allows us to retain a huge amount of information in a schematized, scripted, summarized way so that we can use it in everyday life very quickly without thinking about it.

Episodic memory

memory of everyday events situated in place and time that can be explicitly stated or conjured → we are able to consciously re-experience the past

An emotion

it is a break in continuity of individual-environment interaction (perceived from outside and inside) → suddenly something happens that will create a sensation, an emotion. It has to be sudden, distinctive.

Feeling

refers to the subjective experience of the emotion. It's only one part of the emotion.

Mood

refers to diffuse affective states that can last from a few minutes to a few weeks (e.g. feeling down: it lasts longer than an emotion) and does not necessarily have a distinctive trigger (it's not a sudden change).

Temperament

refers to very stable affective traits that generally accompany the individual throughout life. It is who you are as a person (e.g. I'm a positive person, I'm a realist, etc.). It changes the way you apprehend the world around you.

Preference

refers to what we are attracted to and what we reject (objects, situations, people). It’s on a more cognitive level.

Emotional disorders

refers to pathological syndromes that can last from a few weeks to several years.

Affects

refers to non-emotional affective manifestations

Emotion (Davidson)

• Modulates action

• Appears when an adaptative response is required

• Is triggered by events that occur suddenly: it has to be immediate and a response to something

Mood (Davidson)

• Modulates cognitive content

• Modulates cognitive processing: it changes the way we perceive and appraise the world

• In the background

• Follows events occurring slowly

positive bias

remember the past in a positive way and imagine the future in an overly positive way. There's an adaptive thing: it allows us to make better decisions, be more flexible et get to our goal more easily

Emotion-Enhanced Memory (EEM) effect

encoding, consolidation, and retrieval are enhanced when the information at encoding is emotional as compared to neutral.

Negativity bias

people tend to pay more attention to losses than gains. They feel more impact from negative than positive feedback and process negative information more thoroughly.

The tunnel memory effect

when there’s a highly negative/ stressful event, people only encode the central part of information (e.g., the weapon) but not the peripheral ones (e.g., the face of the aggressor) because their attentional field is restricted.

Fading affect bias

as time passes, negative memories are experienced with less intensity than positive memories (Walker & Skowronski, 2009). It is generally a healthy coping mechanism.

optimism bias

We overestimate the likelihood of positive future events and underestimate the likelihood of negative future events.

social contagion

occurs when participants include details of an event (rightly or wrongly) after discussing them with someone else. In other words

vicarious memory

They are recollections people have of salient life episodes that were told to them by another person

trauma

It is a highly intense event of a person’s life (emotional intensity), with the inability of the person to respond adequately (it’s out of control). It has long-term pathological effects in the psychic organisation, making the person highly vulnerable. It leads to the activation of defence mechanisms.

Intrusions

mental images of very detailed sensory impressions related to the traumatic event, including sounds, emotions, bodily sensations (Krans et al., 2009).

Core memory

representation of initial experience with vivid images, intense emotions and physical sensations. This is more about the feelings.

Narrative memory

when people able to talk about event. It can now be integrated into explicit memory. It’s very important because it can turn the PTSD in a memory that is not traumatic anymore (even though it's still horrible)

rebound effect

if you try to supress the thoughts, you are aware of them, you pay too much attention to them

Flashbulb memories (FBMs)

detailed memories of the reception context where one learns about a surprising and consequential event (Brown & Kulik, 1977).

Collective dimension

unique moments during which course of history and course of our lives aligned

collective memory

Individual memories that are shared and have an impact on collective identity (Hirst & Manier, 2008)

Collective narcissism

(“we are the best”): it’s the tendency to exaggerate the importance or the positive image of the group the person belongs to.

Availability heuristic

as a member of a group, you'll learn more about the collective memory of your own group. It's more easily available, so you give it more importance. It's the same for individual memory. This is more cognitive.

“Myside bias”

it is giving more positive importance coming from your own group and self. This is more social.

“Collaborative inhibition”

when you work with someone else, you might distract the other person's strategy. Our memory processes are very personal. The disruption reduces the oral capacity.

alexithymia

-Difficulties identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal

-Difficulties verbalizing feelings to others

-Poor fantasy life

-Externally oriented thinking(“pensée opératoire”)

level of processing

Semantic processing associated with much higher recall than perceptual processing

Autonoetic consciousness

Conscious and vivid recollection of earlier presentation of items

Recollect what was experienced when stimuli were presented: what Ps was thinking or viewing at the time of encoding

Noetic consciousness

Familiarity: feeling of knowing that stimulus presented before

LE SOI

une personne avec un passé et un futur.

CONSCIENCE AUTONOETIQUE (la « saveur du souvenir »)

conscience de soi dans le temps. Vous êtes conscient que vous êtes toujours vous, même si vous avez changé. Vous êtes conscient que ce n'est pas une réalité, mais que c'est un souvenir, que c'était votre réalité.

SENS SUBJECTIF DU TEMPS (chronesthésie)

il faut avoir une notion du temps qui soit linéaire (on ne revient pas en arrière) → La chronesthésie est une notion de temps qui n'est pas linéaire (on ne revient pas en arrière) → le temps passe.