Committee Chair

Shelton, Jill

Committee Member

Howell, Ashley N.; Madden, Julie

Department

Dept. of Psychology

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Prospective memory is the ability to remember to complete future intentions. Throughout the study of prospective memory, the use of emotional stimuli tends to lead to contradictory effects. Some studies suggest that emotional stimuli, particularly positive stimuli, lead to better prospective memory performance. However, emotional stimuli have also been associated with detrimental effects or even no effect on prospective memory. This study aimed to further investigate the potential influence of both positive and negative emotions on prospective memory. College students completed three blocks of an n-back task with positive and negative emotionally valenced images in the prospective memory blocks for the Experimental condition and neutral images in the Control condition. Results revealed that although there were no differences between positive and negative stimuli, the emotional stimuli overall decreased prospective memory performance. Examination of ongoing task data suggests that emotional images may have suppressed the spontaneous retrieval process.

Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Jill Shelton for not only helping me with this project, but also for giving me all the research and work opportunities that have made me a better academic. Second, thank you to my committee members, Dr. Julie Madden and Dr. Ashley Howell for their help and willingness to be on my committee. Thank you to the CALM Lab for their help with pilot testing, and specifically thank you to research assistants Mia Melone, Khushi Dhruv, and Luke Wiley for your help with the project itself. Thank you to my undergraduate advisor, Dr. Richard Metzger and my alma mater, Stevenson University for allowing me to collect data with their students.

Degree

M. S.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science.

Date

8-2021

Subject

Emotion; Prospective memory

Keyword

emotion; ongoing task cost; prospective memory

Discipline

Psychology

Document Type

Masters theses

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

xii, 47 leaves

Language

English

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Download

Included in

Psychology Commons

Share

COinS