I remember emotional content better, but I’m struggling to remember who said it!

Ludovic Le Bigot (1) , Dominique Knutsen (2) , Sandrine Gil (1)

1 CeRCA [Poitiers] - Centre de recherches sur la cognition et l'apprentissage [UMR 7295]
2 University of Essex

The joint impact of emotion and production on conversational memory was examined in two experiments where pairs of participants took turns producing verbal information. They were instructed to produce out loud sentences based on either neutral or emotional (Experiment 1: negative; Experiment 2: positive) words. Each participant was then asked to recall as many words as possible (content memory) and to indicate who had produced each word (reality monitoring). The analyses showed that both self-production and emotion boost content memory, although emotion also impairs reality monitoring. This study sheds light on how both factors (emotion and production) may constrain language interaction memory through information saliency.

Mots clés: Conversational memory; Emotion; Production effect; Dyadic interaction; Reality monitoring

Domaines: Psychologie

Ludovic Le Bigot, Dominique Knutsen, Sandrine Gil. I remember emotional content better, but I’m struggling to remember who said it!. Cognition, 2018, 180, pp.52-58. ⟨10.1016/j.cognition.2018.07.001⟩. ⟨hal-02378356⟩