Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Combination Of Organization And Emotion: An Immediate Free Recall Task, Christopher O. Hunt

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Both organization (e.g., semantic-relatedness) and emotional valence have been found to lead to better memory as seen through the superior recall of semantically-related and emotionally-valenced lists. However, research suggests that these two factors may not only lack an additive effect when combined, but may result in worse recall. Based on this research, we hypothesized emotion would hinder recall of a semantically-related list by impairing the relational processing that usually benefits recall of semantically-related material. This hypothesis was supported, as it was found that emotional valence resulted in reduced recall in a semantically-related list. This finding may have important implications for …