Subjects: Psychology >> Experimental Psychology Subjects: Psychology >> Social Psychology submitted time 2024-04-20
Abstract： Emotional arousal significantly enhances memory encoding processes, and this enhancement extends to subsequent memories within a defined temporal window. Nevertheless, extant research on the interplay between emotion and memory has predominantly concentrated on elementary emotional states such as happiness or fear. In contrast, the mechanisms by which complex emotions enhance memory encoding remain understudied. To address this gap, our study comprises three experimental investigations aimed at elucidating the selective impact of complex social emotions on subsequent memory encoding.
Our initial experiment (Experiment 1, N=152) employed a questionnaire to assess the motivation levels for learning Civics among participants, which laid the groundwork for further empirical inquiry. Subsequent experiments (Experiments 2 and 3, with a combined participant total of N=241) examined how arousal from complex social emotions—specifically, a sense of national crisis and national pride—selectively influences memory encoding. In Experiment 2, we adopted a between-subjects design, randomly assigning participants to three groups: crisis, pride, and neutral. These groups underwent sessions of emotional arousal followed by tasks involving the encoding and retrieval of Civics material. Experiment 3 replicated the procedure of Experiment 2 but shifted the focus of memory encoding to mathematical statistical learning.
The results revealed a lack of sufficient motivation among college students to learn Civics materials. Crucially, we found that arousal induced by feelings of national crisis and pride prior to memory encoding tasks selectively enhanced the encoding of Civics materials. Interestingly, this enhancement did not extend to the memorization of statistical data or images unrelated to national emotions. This outcome substantiates the hypothesis that arousal from national emotions selectively augments memory encoding of thematically relevant content.
By integrating questionnaire-based assessments, manipulations of social-emotional arousal, and a memory encoding-retrieval paradigm, our study demonstrates that complex social-emotional arousal markedly enhances the specificity of memory encoding. These findings significantly advance our understanding of the complex interrelations between social emotions and memory functions. Additionally, they provide empirical support for refining educational strategies in the domain of ideological and political education in higher education institutions.
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Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2024-02-20
Abstract： Memory consolidation typically occurs slowly during rest or sleep periods following memory encoding. Under stress, though, the consolidation of memories may accelerate considerably. The mechanisms underlying this rapid memory consolidation in stressful circumstances remain unclear, primarily due to the longstanding absence of quantitative methodologies for investigating the neural activities during the human memory consolidation. This research aims to employ computational neuroscience techniques to meticulously characterize neural replay during the consolidation of episodic memory under stress. Specifically, we propose an integrated approach involving cognitive psychology, neuroimaging, machine learning, neuroendocrine regulation, stress induction, and physiological and neuroendocrine assessments to examine the ’double-edged sword’ hypothesis related to stress and neural replay. Although stress might hasten the rate of neural replay, thereby facilitating memory consolidation, it could simultaneously compromise the accuracy of neural replay and disrupt its sequentiality. Our study will: (1) juxtapose the multi-dimensional characteristics of neural replay under stress and non-stress conditions; (2) probe the interplay between neural replay and memory retrieval and encoding in stressful conditions; and (3) strive to employ neuroendocrine and environmental tactics to modulate human stress responses, which in turn could influence neural replay during consolidation. The implications of this research are twofold: it could help identify the optimal brain state to enhance memory consolidation and bridge the gap between human and animal studies on neural replay. At the same time, it could illuminate new strategies for preserving episodic memory function under stress and intervening in memory deficits seen in stress-associated psychiatric disorders.
Subjects: Psychology >> Cognitive Psychology submitted time 2023-09-06
Abstract： Reading and appreciating Chinese classical poetry is a psychological process of readers' aesthetic re-creation. This creative processing targets the artistic YiXiang (意象) constructed by poets through "blending sentiment into scenery", and featuring three psychological processing characteristics: cognitive metaphoricality, emotional loadability, and mutual integration of sentiment and scenery (情景交融). And this creative processing produces the aesthetic Yixiang which has both the objective perceptual representation and readers' subjective thoughts and emotions. Reconstructing artistic Yixiang into aesthetic Yixiang constitutes the core creative processing of reading and appreciating Chinese classical poetry. And its psychological mechanism involves information activation and selective integration in readers' long term memory systems. Specifically, with the support of semantic memory and episodic memory, readers understand the emotion-ladened meaning of Yixiang through semantic association and image construction, and activate corresponding subjective emotional experiences (emotional elements), and generate a situation model of poetry discourse (cognitive elements). On this basis, readers selectively integrate relevant cognitive and emotional elements with their self-related schema in autobiographical memory under an aesthetic goal, thereby establishing novel connections and generating new ideas and concepts. This process is mainly constrained by the novelty of the artistic YiXiang and the readers' capability of creative imagination. This interdisciplinary theoretical study calls on creativity researchers to pay attention to the creative processing on the view of Chinese traditional cultural and focus on the hot-cognitive process of creativity.
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