The effects of emotion on memory are wide-ranging and powerful, but they are not uniform. Although there is agreement that emotion enhances memory for individual items, how it influences memory for the associated contextual details (relational memory, RM) remains debated. The prevalent view suggests that emotion impairs RM, but there is also evidence that emotion enhances RM. To reconcile these diverging results, we carried out three studies incorporating the following features: (1) testing RM with increased specificity, distinguishing between subjective (recollection based) and objective (item-context match) RM accuracy, (2) accounting for emotion-attention interactions via eye-tracking and task manipulation, and (3) using stimuli with integrated item-context content. Challenging the prevalent view, we identified both enhancing and impairing effects. First, emotion enhanced subjective RM, separately and when confirmed by accurate objective RM. Second, emotion impaired objective RM through attention capturing, but it enhanced RM accuracy when attentional effects were statistically accounted for using eye-tracking data. Third, emotion also enhanced RM when participants were cued to focus on contextual details during encoding, likely by increasing item-context binding. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging data recorded from a subset of participants showed that emotional enhancement of RM was associated with increased activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, along with increased intra-MTL and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex-MTL functional connectivity. Overall, these findings reconcile evidence regarding opposing effects of emotion on RM and point to possible training interventions to increase RM specificity in healthy functioning, posttraumatic stress disorder, and aging, by promoting item-context binding and diminishing memory decontextualization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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调和情绪对关系记忆的对立影响：行为、眼动追踪和脑成像调查。


情绪对记忆的影响是广泛而强大的，但它们并不均匀。尽管人们一致认为情绪增强了对单个项目的记忆，但它如何影响相关上下文细节（关系记忆，RM）的记忆仍然存在争议。普遍的观点表明情绪会损害 RM，但也有证据表明情绪会增强 RM。为了调和这些不同的结果，我们进行了三项研究，其中包含以下特征：（1） 以更高的特异性测试 RM，区分主观（基于回忆）和客观（项目-上下文匹配）RM 准确性，（2） 通过眼动追踪和任务操作来解释情绪-注意力互动，以及 （3） 使用具有集成项目-上下文内容的刺激。挑战普遍的观点，我们确定了增强和损害效果。首先，情绪增强了主观 RM，分别和当被准确的客观 RM 证实时。其次，情绪通过注意力捕捉损害了客观 RM，但当使用眼动追踪数据对注意力效应进行统计解释时，它提高了 RM 的准确性。第三，当参与者在编码过程中被提示关注上下文细节时，情绪也增强了 RM，这可能是通过增加项目上下文绑定来实现的。最后，从一部分参与者那里记录的功能性磁共振成像数据显示，RM 的情绪增强与内侧颞叶 （MTL） 和腹外侧前额叶皮层的活动增加有关，同时 MTL 内和腹外侧前额叶皮层-MTL 功能连接增加。 总体而言，这些发现调和了关于情绪对 RM 的相反影响的证据，并指出了可能的训练干预措施，通过促进项目上下文绑定和减少记忆去上下文化，来提高 RM 在健康功能、创伤后应激障碍和衰老方面的特异性。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。