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Setting the alarm: Word emotional attributes require consolidation to be operational

Dumay, Nicolas, Sharma, Dinkar, Kellan, Nora, Abdelrahim, Sarah (2018) Setting the alarm: Word emotional attributes require consolidation to be operational. Emotion, 18 (8). pp. 1078-1096. ISSN 1528-3542. (doi:10.1037/emo0000382) (KAR id:63405)

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Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000382

Abstract

Demonstrations of emotional Stroop in conditioned made-up words are flawed due to the lack of task ensuring similar word encoding across conditions. Here, participants were trained on associations between made-up words (e.g., 'drott') and pictures with an alarming or neutral content (e.g., 'a dead sheep' versus 'a munching cow') in a situation that required attention to both ends of each association. To test whether word emotional attributes need to consolidate before they can hijack attention, one set of associations was learnt seven days before the test, whereas the other set was learnt either six hours or immediately before the test. The novel words' ability to evoke their emotional attributes was assessed using both Stroop and an auditory analogue called pause detection. Matching words and pictures was harder for alarming associations. However, similar learning rate and forgetting at seven days were observed for both types of associations. Pause detection revealed no emotion effect for same-day (i.e., unconsolidated) associations, but robust interference for seven-day-old (i.e., consolidated) alarming associations. Attention capture was found in the emotional Stroop as well, though only when trial n-1 referred to a same-day association. This task also showed stronger response repetition priming (independently of emotion) when trials n and n-1 both tapped into seven-day-old associations. Word emotional attributes hence take between six hours and seven days to be operational. Moreover, age interactions between consecutive trials can be used to gauge implicitly the indirect (relational) episodic associations that develop in the meantime between the memories of individual items.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1037/emo0000382
Uncontrolled keywords: emotional Stroop; memory consolidation; threat detection; relational memory; response/task conflict
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Psychology
Depositing User: Dinkar Sharma
Date Deposited: 14 Sep 2017 10:02 UTC
Last Modified: 11 Jan 2024 10:19 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/63405 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Dumay, Nicolas.

Creator's ORCID:
CReDIT Contributor Roles:

Sharma, Dinkar.

Creator's ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0082-1285
CReDIT Contributor Roles:
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