Chapter 10

Emotional Learning and

Memory

10.1

Behavioral Processes

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10.1 Behavioral Processes

• What Is Emotion?

• Emotions Influence How Memories Are Stored and Retrieved

• Unsolved Mysteries—Can People Forget, Then Recover, Traumatic Memories?

• Learning Emotional Responses: Focus on Fear

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What Is Emotion?

• Emotions involve:Physiological responses

Overt behaviors

Conscious feelings

• Function: marshal body’s resources to respond to important situations.

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What Is Emotion?

• Research by Ekman and others indicate that emotions are universal (innate), but appropriate display

differs by culture (nurture).

Ekman & Matsumoto, Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion, 1989.

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What Is Emotion?

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What Is Emotion?

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What Is Emotion?

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What Is Emotion?

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What Is Emotion?

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What Is Emotion?

• Research by Ekman and others indicate that emotions are universal (innate), but appropriate display differs by culture (nurture). Ekman’s universal emotions:

Happiness Surprise Fear SadnessAnger Disgust

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Autonomic Arousal and the Fight-or-Flight Response

• Arousal—bodily responses that prepare to face threat (fight-or-flight response).

• Responses include: Increased blood flow to muscles

Increased respiration

Depressed digestion

Depressed immune function

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Autonomic Arousal and the Fight-or-Flight Response

• Bodily changes mediated by autonomic nervous system (ANS). Sympathetic division of ANS is switched ON for activation

(especially cardiovascular system).

• ANS sends signal to adrenal glands, which secrete stress hormones, including: Epinephrine (or adrenaline)

Quickly increases heart rate, blood pressure, respiration.

Glucocorticoids (including cortisol)

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Nervous Systems

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The Fight-or-Flight Response

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Which Comes First: The Biological Response, or the Conscious Feeling?

(A) James-Lange theory of emotion = see the bear, jump, and then feel fear.

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Which Comes First: The Biological Response, or the Conscious Feeling?

(B) Modern emotional theory = see the bear, jump, interpret the bear as dangerous, then feel fear.

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Which Comes First: The Biological Response, or the Conscious Feeling?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTTSL6xfcYw

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Do Animals Have Emotions?

• Animals display physiological responses (e.g., piloerection) and overt behaviors (which are studied).

• Whether or not animals have conscious feelings of emotion has yet to be determined…?

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Emotions Influence How Memories Are Stored and Retrieved

• Participants exposed to an illustrated emotional story recalled more details from the dramatic middle (after two weeks) than those who saw the same 12 photos accompanied by a neutral story.

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Pictures Illustrating Emotional and Neutral Stories

Photos courtesy of Larry Cahill, based on an original design from Heuer and Reisberg, 1990.

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• Result: emotions strengthen explicit memories.

Emotion and Encoding of Memories

Graph of effect of emotion on story recall.

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Emotion and Retrieval of Memories

• Mood-congruency of memory—it is easier to retrieve memories that match our current mood. e.g., patients diagnosed with clinical depression more

likely to recall sad events.

• In study, participants were asked to recall episodic memories elicited by neutral nouns (ship, street, etc.). Participants’ stories reflected their current mood

(happy or sad).

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Mood Congruency of Memory

Data from Eich et al., 1994.

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Flashbulb Memories

• Where were you when…

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0Qu6eyyr4c• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2syxXPR7xY

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIDhAjAGIDM&NR=1

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u696R5GQEQ&feature=related

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE-x572rXGY&feature=related

• Flashbulb Memories—emotional-event memory quickly formed; preserve vivid detail.

Shocking event has “consequentiality” or personal significance. Act like “flash photographs.”

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Can Flashbulb Memories be Trusted?

• Accuracy over time?

• Confidence in accuracy?

• Source amnesia as a factor?

Time Elapsed

% of Subjects

15 months 32 months

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Minor distortion

Major distortion

Adapted from Figure 1 of Schmolck, H., Buffalo, E., & Squire, L. (2000). Memory distortions develop over time: Recollections of the O. J. Simpson trial verdict after 15 and 32 months. Psychological Science, 11(1), 39–45.

Flashbulb memories: Distortion over Time (Memory Distortions in O. J. Simpson Trial)

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Unsolved Mysteries—Can People Forget, Then Recover, Traumatic Memories?

• Extreme stress can disrupt the hippocampus, resulting in an incomplete memory. Such memories may be vulnerable to distortion.

Lab research suggests memories recovered during guided imagery or hypnosis can be distorted.

• Further understanding of the brain substrates of false memories may help identify recovered memories.

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Learning Emotional Responses: Focus on Fear

• Animal memory study is focused on learning of physiological responses. Animals cannot verbalize

episodic memories.

• Fear more often investigated because: Fear responses tend to

generalize to humans.

Fear responses are relatively easy to elicit.

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Conditioned Emotional Responses: Learning to Predict Danger

• Rat freezes (unconditioned response, UR) from an unpleasant, surprising electric shock (unconditioned stimulus, US). Nothing further happens, rat returns to normal.

Repeatedly paired with tone (neutral conditioned stimulus, CS), rat may freeze in response to tone.

US–CS association

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Conditioned Emotional Responses: Learning to Predict Danger

• Typical emotional conditioning experiment: 10 second tone CS is presented and animal is startled;

elicits slightly raised blood pressure and brief freezing.

Next, tone CS is presented right before foot-shock US; in 1 trial, rat develops 90-second freezing CR.

Other potential CRs include increased heart rate, stress hormone release, or defecation.

• Emotionally conditioned CRs are long-lasting, resistant to extinction, easy to recondition.

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Conditioned Emotional Responding in Rats

Adapted from LeDoux, 1993.

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Conditioned Avoidance: Learning to Avoid Danger Altogether

• Conditioned avoidance—learner increases responses (takes action) to avoid danger. In study, though it prefers the dark, rat is placed in lighted area

of box. Rat moves to dark area and is shocked. Rat freezes and returns to lighted area.

Freezing is a CR to this environmental context.

Rat will also delay or avoid its return to dark area.Illustrates positive punishment.

• Like conditioned emotional learning, avoidance learning can be fast, long-lasting.

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Anagram Experiment

• Tab

• Lemon

• Icemaran

• Whisk

• Slapstick

• Icemaran

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Learned Helplessness

• Learned helplessness—exposure to uncontrollable punisher teaches expectation that response is ineffectual. Reduces avoidance motivation.

May be component of depression.

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Learned Helplessness in Rats

Data from Besson et al., 1999.

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Learned Helplessness

• In Seligman et. al. study: Dog received shock in an avoidance chamber.

If dog heard warning tone before shock, learned to jump barrier to safe chamber, avoiding shock.

Next, dogs learn CS (tone)–US (shock) association before placement in avoidance chamber. Prior US exposure gave some dogs learned helplessness.

Dogs never learned to jump the barrier to escape shock.

Instead, they ran around, then lay down and whimpered, enduring the shock.

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Learned Helplessness

• A person or animal perceives that they are unable to change a situation, even if the situation is changeable. This feeling of futility is thought to be caused by an individual's perception of events and their perception of a lack of ability to control these events. The state of helplessness is learned after an individual's attempts to correct situations failed, or were perceived to have failed. The feeling of helplessness is often expanded to future encounters with similar situations, or even vastly dissimilar situations.

• Torture, Depression, etc?...

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10.1 Interim Summary

• Emotions consist of three distinct, interrelated, processes: Physiological responses (“fight-or-flight”)

Overt behaviors (e.g., smiling or freezing)

Conscious feelings

• We cannot know if nonverbal animals “feel” emotions like humans do. But, many species react to emotional stimuli with

similar physiological responses and behaviors.

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10.1 Interim Summary

• James-Lange theory of emotion = conscious feelings of emotion occur when the mind senses the bodily responses associated with an emotion “We feel afraid because we are running.”

• Modern researchers note that emotion is a complex phenomenon involving a constant interplay between cognitive assessments, conscious feelings, and bodily responses.

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10.1 Interim Summary

• Major emotions = constant across races and cultures. Though, expression (display) of emotion may be socially learned.

• Emotional learning can be assessed by measuring biological responses to emotional stimulus. e.g., heart rate, skin conductance response,

freezing response, conditioned avoidance.

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10.1 Interim Summary

• Fight-or-flight is mediated by autonomic nervous system; temporarily diverts resources toward bodily systems needed to fight or run away. Cluster of responses = arousal.

Stress hormones (e.g., epinephrine) help turn on arousal, and glucocorticoids may help dampen it once danger has passed.

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10.1 Interim Summary

• Emotional arousal increases the probability that memories will be stored and retained.

• Flashbulb memories of highly emotional events are especially vivid, long-lasting. Not always accurate in all details.