TY - JOUR
T1 - Emotional metacognition
T2 - stimulus valence modulates cardiac arousal and metamemory
AU - Legrand, Nicolas
AU - Engen, Sebastian Scott
AU - Correa, Camile Maria Costa
AU - Mathiasen, Nanna Kildahl
AU - Nikolova, Niia
AU - Fardo, Francesca
AU - Allen, Micah
N1 - Funding Information:
N. L., C. M. C. C., N. K. M., N. N., and M. A. are supported by a Lundbeckfonden Fellowship (under Grant [R272-2017-4345]), and the AIAS-COFUND II fellowship programme that is supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 (under Grant [754513]), and the Aarhus University Research Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - Emotion alters how we feel, see, and experience the world. In the domain of memory, the emotional valence and arousal of memorised stimuli can modulate both the acuity and content of episodic recall. However, no experiment has investigated whether arousal and valence also influence metacognition for memory (i.e. the process of self-monitoring memories). In a pre-registered study, we applied a novel psychophysiological design together with computational models of metacognition to assess the influence of stimulus valence and arousal on the sensitivity, bias, and efficiency of metamemory. To estimate the role of physiological arousal in mediating these effects, we recorded cardiac measures through pulse oximetry. We found that negative valence substantially decreased both memory performance and subjective confidence, in particular for low arousal words. Simultaneously, we found that emotional valence modulated both heart rate and heart-rate variability (HRV) during recognition memory. Exploratory trial-level analyses further revealed that subjective confidence was encoded in instantaneous heart-rate fluctuations and that this relationship was also modulated by emotional valence. Our results demonstrate that recognition memory and metacognition are influenced by the emotional valence of encoded items and that this correlation is in part related to cardiac activity.
AB - Emotion alters how we feel, see, and experience the world. In the domain of memory, the emotional valence and arousal of memorised stimuli can modulate both the acuity and content of episodic recall. However, no experiment has investigated whether arousal and valence also influence metacognition for memory (i.e. the process of self-monitoring memories). In a pre-registered study, we applied a novel psychophysiological design together with computational models of metacognition to assess the influence of stimulus valence and arousal on the sensitivity, bias, and efficiency of metamemory. To estimate the role of physiological arousal in mediating these effects, we recorded cardiac measures through pulse oximetry. We found that negative valence substantially decreased both memory performance and subjective confidence, in particular for low arousal words. Simultaneously, we found that emotional valence modulated both heart rate and heart-rate variability (HRV) during recognition memory. Exploratory trial-level analyses further revealed that subjective confidence was encoded in instantaneous heart-rate fluctuations and that this relationship was also modulated by emotional valence. Our results demonstrate that recognition memory and metacognition are influenced by the emotional valence of encoded items and that this correlation is in part related to cardiac activity.
KW - arousal
KW - Emotion
KW - heart rate variability
KW - memory
KW - metacognition
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85097834325&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/02699931.2020.1859993
DO - 10.1080/02699931.2020.1859993
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 33342362
AN - SCOPUS:85097834325
SN - 0269-9931
VL - 35
SP - 705
EP - 721
JO - Cognition and Emotion
JF - Cognition and Emotion
IS - 4
ER -