Retrograde Memory: The Predictors of Horror are Remembered Better Than the Horror Itself

160 Butler University students participated in this study and have been compensated with extra credit. The participants viewed a narrated slide show of a tour through a home. The slide show consisted of 35 slides, which contained 16 slides of photos of rooms, 16 word slides labeling the rooms, and 3 slides containing either emotionally arousing photos or neutral photos. We tested participant’s memories of pre-critical, critical, and post-critical slides, which were located in the middle of the slide show. Participants in the emotion condition changed their rated emotion valence over the course of the experiment, F(1,157) = 15.35, p \u3c .0001, suggesting the emotional content of the slides worked as designed. Participants recalled more items overall, F(2, 314) = 3.5, p \u3c .035 when they were in the pre-critical slide that preceded the emotional condition (M=1.1) than when they were in the critical slide in the emotional condition (M=.86), or the post-critical slide in the emotional condition (M=.78). Therefore, arousal enhanced memory for the items preceding the emotional slides. In other words, memory will be enhanced for items that may come to signal arousing events