The Effects of Unexpectedness and Emotional Arousal on Long-Term and Short-Term Memory

Authors : Işılay Pirpiroğlu, Gülten Ünal

Pages : 54-66

View : 102 | Download : 74

Publication Date : 2024-06-30

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Memory is quite selective. Many factors (e.g. familiarity, unexpectedness, emotions) affect memory performance. The current study investigates the effects of unexpectedness and emotional arousal on long-term and short-term memory. For this aim, 125 undergraduate students were randomly assigned into 4 conditions: 2 unexpectedness (high vs. low) and 2 emotional arousal (negatively-valanced vs. positively-valanced). For unexpectedness manipulation, 9 commonly used Turkish proverbs were used. A word was removed from the middle of each proverb and proverbs were presented to the participants. Then, they were asked to mentally guess the missing word. In the next page, the missing part was filled in with a new word. Words that did not disrupt the flow of meaning and were similar to the original word extracted from the proverb were used for the low unexpected condition. While new words chosen far from the original word were used for the high unexpected condition. Two types of music (positive vs. negative valance) were used for emotional arousal. Short-term memory performance includes the number of correct words remembered after the experiment, while long-term memory includes the number of correct words remembered 24 hours after the experiment. The result of the study showed that the low unexpected stimulus group, when combined with negative stimulation, led to increased performance in long-term memory. Thus, it has been observed that both stimulus unexpectedness and the degree of unexpectedness have effect on memory performance.
Keywords : beklenmediklik, duygusal uyarılma, yenilik, kısa süreli bellek, uzun süreli bellek