Effects of Emotional Prosody on Directed Forgetting

DOI: 10.5176/2251-1865_CBP40

Authors: Hwajin Yang and Sujin Yang

Abstract: To investigate how angry prosody influencesforgetting, neutral words spoken either in neutral or angryprosody were presented using the listwise directed forgettingparadigm, and their memory was assessed using a recognitiontest. When the study items were spoken angrily, we founddisrupted forgetting (i.e., no costs), but enhanced remembering(i.e., benefits). When the study items were spoken neutrally,however, neither forgetting nor benefits was observed. Furtheranalyses showed that directed forgetting did not influence theresponse bias. Taken together, these findings suggest thatemotional prosody undermines forgetting but facilitatesremembering.

Keywords: Emotional prosody; Directed forgetting;Memory cost; Memory benefits; Recognition