Mood-dependent memory

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Mood dependence is the facilitation of memory when mood at retrieval is identical to the mood at encoding. When one encodes a memory, they not only record sensory data (such as visual or auditory data), they also store their mood and emotional states. An individual's present mood thus affects the memories that are most easily available to them, such that when they are in a good mood they recall good memories (and vice versa). The associative nature of memory also means that one tends to store happy memories in a linked set. Unlike mood-congruent memory, mood-dependent memory occurs when one's current mood resembles their mood at the time of memory storage, which helps to recall the memory. Thus, the likelihood of remembering an event is higher when encoding and recall moods match up. However, it seems that only authentic moods have the power to produce these mood-dependent effects. [1] [ failed verification ]

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Theories of emotion

Mood is the state or quality of feeling at a particular time. When attempting to discover the biological factors that influence mood, it is difficult to find scientific proofs. The psychological study of mood is built on theories. However, much has been discovered in the study of the brain. The following are a few theories and areas of study of the mind used to further our knowledge of the mind.

Somatic theories

See also Somatic theories

Somatic theories of emotion claim that bodily responses are essential to emotions, rather than judgements. In the 1880s, William James provided the first modern version of such theories. [2] The James–Lange theory, seen by many as his masterwork, lost favor in the 20th century, but has regained popularity more recently due largely to theorists such as John Cacioppo, António Damásio, Joseph E. LeDoux and Robert Zajonc who are able to appeal to neurological evidence. The James-Lange theory states that “Subjective emotions are the effect, not the cause, of the physiological manifestations of those emotions.” [3]

Neurobiological theories

See also Neurobiological theories

Based on discoveries made through neural mapping of the limbic system, the neurobiological explanation of human emotion is that emotion is a pleasant or unpleasant mental state organized in the limbic system of the mammalian brain. If distinguished from reactive responses of reptiles, emotions would then be mammalian elaborations of general vertebrate arousal patterns, in which neurochemicals (for example, dopamine, noradrenaline, and serotonin) step-up or step-down the brain's activity level, as visible in body movements, gestures, and postures. This hypothesis that synaptic plasticity is an important part of the neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory is now widely accepted. [4]

Cognitive theories

See also Cognitive theories

In cognitive psychology, the human mind is seen to be a structured system for handling information. [5] Several theories argue that cognitive activities such as judgments, evaluations, or thoughts are necessary for an emotion to occur. Richard Lazarus argues this by saying it is necessary to capture the fact that emotions are about something or have intentionality. Such cognitive activity may be conscious or unconscious and may or may not take the form of conceptual processing.

Written in 1958, Donald Eric Broadbent's Perception and Communication was the first book entirely devoted to human information processing. This book introduced the notion of several distinct kinds of storage systems (memories) of limited capacity and of attention as a mechanism for filtering incoming information.

Internal versus external events

Internal events occur in the human mind. These occurrences of cognition are visible only to the person who experiences them. External events are physical occurrences experienced in a human's environment, such as receiving a gift or encountering a friend. External events affect the mood of an individual depending on how he or she perceives the action. Some evidence suggests that internal events, such as imagination and reasoning, are less likely than external events to be remembered after a mood shift. [6] Eich and Metcalfe conducted several experiments on this subject. Each experiment was composed of an encoding session and a retrieval session. Subjects were asked to describe their current mood, and then listened to classical music chosen to instigate either happiness or sadness. As they listened to the music, subjects again expressed how they were feeling to keep their minds working.

The researchers came to several conclusions from this study. They found that events are generated through internal processes that are more connected to one's mood than to external processes. [6] Although the source of an event seems to play a part in the occurrence of mood dependent memory, it is not the only relevant factor. In addition, memories vary in terms of the manner in which retention is measured. [6] The strength and stability of moods that impair memory must meet two conditions: the mood shift must be substantial, and the mood at the start must be the same when it ends in encoding or retrieval. [6] The relationship between mood and arousal is also important: if mood is dependent on arousal, then mood corresponds to a subjective state which describes mood dependent memory. [6]

Mood congruence versus mood dependence

There is a definitive difference in mood congruence and mood dependence. Lewis and Critchley discuss the difference in these memory effects. Mood congruence is when one can match an emotion to a specific memory. [7] Mood dependence, on the other hand, is the sorting of memory when mood at retrieval is the same as encoding. After using others' research, Lewis and Critchley came to the conclusion that there is neural basis for the influence of mood at encoding and that this influence at the base relates to activity of emotion specific regions of the brain. [7] One model they propose is the semantic network approach, which suggests that 'emotion-specific memory nodes connect many related aspects of an emotion, such as autonomic responses, expressive behaviours, and description of situations that might evoke the emotion'. [7] Within this model, two assumptions may be made: remembering certain information while in a specific mood leads to responsiveness in the emotional system that corresponds to that particular mood and mood at retrieval influences ones' emotions. [7] This relates to mood-dependent memory because it may suggest that ones' mood at encoding could become associated with neutral information. It may also imply the activity of emotions, triggered by mood at retrieval, could propagate to the nodes with the same mood at encoding.

Lewis and Critchley, however, state that the semantic-network approach is weak for three reasons. First, though emotions retrieve past information, one cannot decipher between positive and negative moods in this particular approach. Second, it is unclear as to whether positive and negative moods at recall lead to activity in a positive or negative way in the emotions. Lastly, researchers cannot prove that emotional activity due to mood could interact with emotional activity associated with remembrance. [7] For these reasons, the semantic-network approach is not as reliable as researchers would have hoped.

Music-dependent memory

Music-dependent memory is an effect of mood-dependent memory. There have been many studies conducted that have suggested that the music one listens to may affect their mood. In Balch and Lewis’ article, they studied how the participants’ moods were affected by the change in tempo of a musical piece. The participants were each given a list of words to read while music played in the background, with varying tempos distributed randomly. The participants were then asked to recall all the words they had read previously. Balch and Lewis found that the participants were able to remember more words when the tempo did not change. This same experiment was composed in different ways: with a change in timbre, a different song playing, or silence with no music at all. However, none of these experiments returned results suggesting that changing the different aspects of music affected the memory of participants, indicating that change in tempo seemed to be the only thing that influenced the participants’ memories. There is still much research being done concerning music-dependent memory. [8]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Forgetting</span> Loss or modification of information encoded in an individuals memory

Forgetting or disremembering is the apparent loss or modification of information already encoded and stored in an individual's short or long-term memory. It is a spontaneous or gradual process in which old memories are unable to be recalled from memory storage. Problems with remembering, learning and retaining new information are a few of the most common complaints of older adults. Studies show that retention improves with increased rehearsal. This improvement occurs because rehearsal helps to transfer information into long-term memory.

Long-term memory (LTM) is the stage of the Atkinson–Shiffrin memory model in which informative knowledge is held indefinitely. It is defined in contrast to short-term and working memory, which persist for only about 18 to 30 seconds. LTM is commonly labelled as "explicit memory" (declarative), as well as "episodic memory," "semantic memory," "autobiographical memory," and "implicit memory".

Recall in memory refers to the mental process of retrieval of information from the past. Along with encoding and storage, it is one of the three core processes of memory. There are three main types of recall: free recall, cued recall and serial recall. Psychologists test these forms of recall as a way to study the memory processes of humans and animals. Two main theories of the process of recall are the two-stage theory and the theory of encoding specificity.

Source amnesia is the inability to remember where, when or how previously learned information has been acquired, while retaining the factual knowledge. This branch of amnesia is associated with the malfunctioning of one's explicit memory. It is likely that the disconnect between having the knowledge and remembering the context in which the knowledge was acquired is due to a dissociation between semantic and episodic memory – an individual retains the semantic knowledge, but lacks the episodic knowledge to indicate the context in which the knowledge was gained.

Explicit memory is one of the two main types of long-term human memory, the other of which is implicit memory. Explicit memory is the conscious, intentional recollection of factual information, previous experiences, and concepts. This type of memory is dependent upon three processes: acquisition, consolidation, and retrieval.

State-dependent memory or state-dependent learning is the phenomenon where people remember more information if their physical or mental state is the same at time of encoding and time of recall. State-dependent memory is heavily researched in regards to its employment both in regards to synthetic states of consciousness as well as organic states of consciousness such as mood. While state-dependent memory may seem rather similar to context-dependent memory, context-dependent memory involves an individual's external environment and conditions while state-dependent memory applies to the individual's internal conditions.

Mood congruence is the consistency between a person's emotional state with the broader situations and circumstances being experienced by the persons at that time. By contrast, mood incongruence occurs when the individual's reactions or emotional state appear to be in conflict with the situation. In the context of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions may be considered mood congruent or incongruent.

Tip of the tongue is the phenomenon of failing to retrieve a word or term from memory, combined with partial recall and the feeling that retrieval is imminent. The phenomenon's name comes from the saying, "It's on the tip of my tongue." The tip of the tongue phenomenon reveals that lexical access occurs in stages.

Memory has the ability to encode, store and recall information. Memories give an organism the capability to learn and adapt from previous experiences as well as build relationships. Encoding allows a perceived item of use or interest to be converted into a construct that can be stored within the brain and recalled later from long-term memory. Working memory stores information for immediate use or manipulation, which is aided through hooking onto previously archived items already present in the long-term memory of an individual.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reminiscence bump</span> Memory phenomenon related to human aging

The reminiscence bump is the tendency for older adults to have increased or enhanced recollection for events that occurred during their adolescence and early adulthood. It was identified through the study of autobiographical memory and the subsequent plotting of the age of encoding of memories to form the lifespan retrieval curve.

Autobiographical memory (AM) is a memory system consisting of episodes recollected from an individual's life, based on a combination of episodic and semantic memory. It is thus a type of explicit memory.

In psychology, context-dependent memory is the improved recall of specific episodes or information when the context present at encoding and retrieval are the same. In a simpler manner, "when events are represented in memory, contextual information is stored along with memory targets; the context can therefore cue memories containing that contextual information". One particularly common example of context-dependence at work occurs when an individual has lost an item in an unknown location. Typically, people try to systematically "retrace their steps" to determine all of the possible places where the item might be located. Based on the role that context plays in determining recall, it is not at all surprising that individuals often quite easily discover the lost item upon returning to the correct context. This concept is heavily related to the encoding specificity principle.

Emotion can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events.

Memory gaps and errors refer to the incorrect recall, or complete loss, of information in the memory system for a specific detail and/or event. Memory errors may include remembering events that never occurred, or remembering them differently from the way they actually happened. These errors or gaps can occur due to a number of different reasons, including the emotional involvement in the situation, expectations and environmental changes. As the retention interval between encoding and retrieval of the memory lengthens, there is an increase in both the amount that is forgotten, and the likelihood of a memory error occurring.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Childhood memory</span> Early life experiences often memorable for life

Childhood memory refers to memories formed during childhood. Among its other roles, memory functions to guide present behaviour and to predict future outcomes. Memory in childhood is qualitatively and quantitatively different from the memories formed and retrieved in late adolescence and the adult years. Childhood memory research is relatively recent in relation to the study of other types of cognitive processes underpinning behaviour. Understanding the mechanisms by which memories in childhood are encoded and later retrieved has important implications in many areas. Research into childhood memory includes topics such as childhood memory formation and retrieval mechanisms in relation to those in adults, controversies surrounding infantile amnesia and the fact that adults have relatively poor memories of early childhood, the ways in which school environment and family environment influence memory, and the ways in which memory can be improved in childhood to improve overall cognition, performance in school, and well-being, both in childhood and in adulthood.

Childhood amnesia, also called infantile amnesia, is the inability of adults to retrieve episodic memories before the age of two to four years. It may also refer to the scarcity or fragmentation of memories recollected from early childhood, particularly occurring between the ages of 2 and 6. On average, this fragmented period wanes off at around 4.7 years. Around 5-6 years of age in particular is thought to be when autobiographical memory seems to stabilize and be on par with adults. The development of a cognitive self is also thought by some to have an effect on encoding and storing early memories.

The encoding specificity principle is the general principle that matching the encoding contexts of information at recall assists in the retrieval of episodic memories. It provides a framework for understanding how the conditions present while encoding information relate to memory and recall of that information.

Culture in music cognition refers to the impact that a person's culture has on their music cognition, including their preferences, emotion recognition, and musical memory. Musical preferences are biased toward culturally familiar musical traditions beginning in infancy, and adults' classification of the emotion of a musical piece depends on both culturally specific and universal structural features. Additionally, individuals' musical memory abilities are greater for culturally familiar music than for culturally unfamiliar music. The sum of these effects makes culture a powerful influence in music cognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bilingual memory</span>

Bilingualism is the regular use of two fluent languages, and bilinguals are those individuals who need and use two languages in their everyday lives. A person's bilingual memories are heavily dependent on the person's fluency, the age the second language was acquired, and high language proficiency to both languages. High proficiency provides mental flexibility across all domains of thought and forces them to adopt strategies that accelerate cognitive development. People who are bilingual integrate and organize the information of two languages, which creates advantages in terms of many cognitive abilities, such as intelligence, creativity, analogical reasoning, classification skills, problem solving, learning strategies, and thinking flexibility.

Music-evoked autobiographical memories (MEAMs) refer to the recollection of personal experiences or past events that are triggered when hearing music or some musical stimulus. While there is a degree of inter-individual variation in music listening patterns and evoked responses, MEAMs are generally triggered in response to a wide variety of music, often popular or classical genres, and are estimated to occur in the range from one to a few times per day, regardless of formal instrumental practice or music lessons. Consistent with the hallmarks of general autobiographical memories, everyday MEAMs similarly exhibit a recency effect, a reminiscence bump, and childhood amnesia, encoding autobiographical knowledge at several levels of specificity and across several common social and situational contexts. The phenomenon of MEAMs has been widely studied in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and musicology. In recent years, the subject has garnered significant interest from researchers and the general public alike due to music's capacity to evoke vivid, emotional, and episodically rich autobiographical memories.

References

  1. ↑ "Mood Memory". ChangingMinds.org.
  2. ↑ "William James". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . 2000.
  3. ↑ Wertheimer, Michael; Puente, Antonio (2020). A Brief History of Psychology. New York: Routledge. p. 202. ISBN   978-1-138-28474-6.
  4. ↑ Morris, R. G. M.; Moser, E. I.; Riedel, G.; Martin, S. J.; Sandin, J.; Day, M.; O'Carroll, C. (2003). "Elements of a neurobiological theory of the hippocampus: the role of activity-dependent synaptic plasticity in memory [Abstract]". British Journal of Learning Disabilities. 36 (1): 54–58.
  5. ↑ Neisser, U. (2009). "Cognitive psychology". Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Retrieved 17 July 2009.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 Eich, E.; Metcalfe, J. (1989). "Mood-dependent memory for internal versus external events". Journal of Experimental Psychology. 15 (3): 443–455. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.15.3.443.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Lewis, Penelope A.; Critchley, Hugo D. (2003). "Mood-dependent memory" (PDF). Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 7 (10): 431–433. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2003.08.005. PMID   14550485. S2CID   5926387. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-26. Retrieved 2011-04-28.
  8. ↑ Balch, W.; Lewis, B. (1996). "Music-Dependent Memory: The Roles of Tempo Change and Mood Mediation". Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 22 (6): 1354–1363. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.22.6.1354.
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