Association for Psychological Science

Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0963721413498893 cdps.sagepub.com Memory for emotional stimuli and events is typically more vivid (Todd, Talmi, Schmitz, Susskind, & Anderson, 2012) and more accurate than memory for neutral stimuli and events (Labar & Cabeza, 2006). Researchers often explain this phenomenon of enhanced emotional mem-ory using the modulation model (McGaugh, 2004; Schmidt & Saari, 2007): Emotional arousal during an experience causes secretion of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol in the body, which initiates a chain of events culminating in the activation of the amyg-dala, a brain region that boosts the consolidation o