Abstract (eng)
In recent years, the number of studies investigating the influence of emotions on memory has increased substantially. Most of these experiments observed a memory advantage for negative emotional stimuli compared to neutral ones. This effect, in connection with Judgments of Learning (JoL), has only been investigated in two recent studies. Additionally, another branch of research has been devoted to the influence of framing in connection with remembering and forgetting as related to memory and JoL.
The present study is one of the first to examine the exclusive and the combined influence of framing and emotional pictures on recall performance, immediate and global JoL, as well as on the accuracy of immediate and global JoL.
124 students were assigned to four test conditions at random. All participants were framed in terms of forgetting or remembering and viewed either 33 emotional or neutral pictures taken from the IAPS of Lang, Bradley and Cuthbert (2008). In the beginning, each participant read a fictitious framing text. Subsequently, all pictures were shown for five seconds following an immediate JoL. After all the pictures were presented, the participants reported their global JoL. Finally a recall test was also conducted.
Results show that with emotional pictures, recall performance was better, immediate JoL were higher and global JoL were more accurate than with neutral pictures. An interaction between framing and emotion relating to recall performance could also be observed. Moreover, participants with remember framing gave higher immediate JoL compared to participants with forget framing. Generally, global JoL turned out to be higher than immediate JoL, however, global JoL tended to be less accurate.
The findings broaden the scarce body of knowledge about the influence of framing and emotions on memory processes. It should be noted that framing in connection with forgetting causes a strong decrease in recall performance when neutral pictures are presented. Furthermore, participants in the remember condition appear to be more confident in remembering pictures. Additionally, global JoL should be interpreted carefully since, in the present study, they turned out to be less accurate than immediate JoL.