Memory for specific visual details can be enhanced by negative arousing content Memory and Language

Individuals often claim that they vividly remember information with negative emotional content. At least two types of information could lead to this sense of enhanced vividness: Information about the emotional item itself (e.g., the exact visual details of a snake) and information about the context in which the emotional item was encountered (e.g., the fact that the snake was sitting on a branch in a forest). The present study focused on the former, investigating how exposure duration at study and emotional content of an object affected the likelihood of remembering an item (cid:1) s specific visual details. Participants studied neutral objects (e.g., a barometer) and negative arousing objects (e.g., a gre-nade) and were later shown either the identical object or a different photo of the same type of object (e.g., another barometer). Across two experiments, emotional content enhanced the likelihood that specific visual details were remembered: Individuals were more likely to correctly indicate that an item was identical to the object studied earlier if it was an emotional object than if it was a neutral object. This memory benefit for the emotional items was most robust when items were shown for longer exposure durations (500 or 1000 ms) rather than only briefly (for 250 ms). Thus, with suf-ficient processing time, negative arousing content appears to enhance the likelihood that visual details are remembered about an object.