The impact of picture cue emotionality on metamemory and cued recall of associated words

Judgments of learning (JOL) are subjective predictions about how well information will be remembered in the future. Emotional stimuli have shown to be better remembered in free recall experiments, but not in cued recall experiments, even though JOLs have shown to be higher for emotional stimuli. The aim of the present study was to test the hypothesis that emotional cues lead to higher JOLs but worse recollection performance than neutral counterparts. Twenty-eight undergraduate students participated in the study to rate and memorize neutral words paired with pictures that varied in emotionality (negative, neutral) and composition (high-complex, low-complex). The results showed that participants remembered negative-paired words reliably worse than neutral-paired words, but rated negative- paired words as more memorable than neutral-paired words. An underconfidence was observed for neutral-paired words and, to some extent, overconfidence for negative-paired words. The results are discussed in terms of relevance to witnesses’ memories.