Emotional oddball: A review on memory effects

Abstract

How do emotional stimuli influence perception, attention, and ultimately memory? This debate at the cross-section of emotion and cognition research has a long tradition. The emotional oddball paradigm (EOP) has frequently been applied to investigate the detection and processing of (emotional) change detection (Schlüter & Bermeitinger, 2017). However, the EOP has also been used to reveal the effects of emotional deviants on memory for serially presented stimuli. In this integrative article, we review the results of 29 experiments published between the years 2000 and 2017. Based on these data, we provide an overview of how the EOP is applied in the context of memory research. We also review and integrate the empirical evidence for memory effects in the EOP (with a special focus on retrograde and anterograde emotion-induced effects) and present theories of emotional memory as well as their fit with the results obtained by the EOP. Directions for future research are presented that would help to address important issues of the current debate around emotion-induced memory effects.