The Influence of Emotional Context Changes and Rumination on Memory for Prior Remembering

Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Thursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT

Olivia Siegal
Olivia Siegal

Olivia Siegal is a rising senior (’21) from Brookline, Massachusetts and a graduate of Gann Academy. At Wesleyan, she is a Psychology and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies double major. Aside from psychology, languages, and Russian literature, she loves creative writing, and she has worked as a writing tutor on campus for two years, in addition to attending creative writing workshops in her spare time. Olivia plans to pursue a career in clinical psychology and experimental psychopathology after graduating from Wesleyan.

Abstract: Remembering prior remembering, or one’s judgment as to whether one has previously retrieved a memory, is its own cognitive process. As with other cognitive operations, memory for prior remembering may be influenced by situational factors, such as changes in context between initial and subsequent retrieval, and individual differences, such as tendency to ruminate. Recently, memory researchers have taken an interest in studying the effect of contextual changes on memory for prior remembering, beginning with the work of Arnold and Lindsay (2002). In the present experiment, we examined the influence of changes in emotional context on performance on a prior remembering task based on the cued recall paradigm developed by Arnold and Lindsay (2002). We introduced rumination, depression, and anxiety as covariates in our ANOVA model. We hypothesized that changing between a negative and neutral context across cued recall tests would lead to more prior remembering errors. Further, we expected that trait rumination scores would help explain the relationship between changes in emotional context and prior remembering accuracy. Understanding the impact of emotional context changes and rumination on memory for prior remembering is of particular relevance to the clinical application of prior remembering research – trauma-related prior remembering errors – given the strong, affective charge of traumatic memories, as well as the associations between rumination and posttraumatic stress. Additionally, analyzing rumination as an explanatory variable further extends the body of research on the inhibitory effects of rumination on cognition.

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Live Poster Session: Zoom Link
Thursday, July 30th 1:15-2:30pm EDT

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