Emotion and explicit verbal memory: Evidence using Malay Lexicon

Abstract

The dichotomy of emotional system and cognitive system has been debated for centuries. As a result, there is still much to know about the effects of emotions on memory. In two experiments, emotion was manipulated to investigate its effect on recall and recognition of words. Experiment 1 used a recognition test and experiment 2 used a free recall test. Emotion was manipulated in word stimuli: positive words, negative words and neutral words (baseline condition). Malay words were used as the verbal stimuli. The valences of the words were taken from ANEW. Results revealed that memory was better on the recognition test than recall test. Emotion had a significant effect on memory performance where both positive and negative emotions improved memory when compared to the baseline condition. The implication is that Malay words elicit a different result on explicit memory when emotional content of the words was manipulated.