5 - MEMORY AND AROUSAL EXPERIMENT

Question 1

METHOD

Answer 1

• participants see pictures while hearing either an emotionally neural (N) or emotionally arousing story (A)
• either injected with placebo (Pl) or adrenalin antagonist (Ant) (prevents effects of adrenaline (adrenaline is a neuro-modulator) - as if the body didn’t produce any adrenaline) (doesn’t reduce memory)
• memory for pictures is measured
• baseline 1 = described family day out in park
• test = action movie (neutral) / witness crash (arousing)
• baseline 2 = come home

Question 2

INTERPRETATION / RESULTS

Answer 2

• effect of emotional arousal on learning mediated by adrenaline
• effect of adrenaline is dose dependant (inversed U shape) - increased adrenaline beyond on a certain point = improved memory (eg on a roller coaster) / but too much and it decreases memory (reversed effect)(eg fake life threatening scenario)(could be due to attentional focussing see other card)
• arousing story + placebo = higher memory score (due to adrenaline + arousing story)
• all others were same as baseline
• shows arousing situation in itself doesn’t affect memory
• N/Pl = shows not just adrenaline (need to be aroused, otherwise adrenaline won’t increase)
• N/Ant = shows antagonist itself doesn’t affect memory

Question 3

EXTENSION

Answer 3

• similar experiments testing other stress hormones (adrenaline, noradrenalin, corticosteroids)
• all show similar results

Question 4

CONCLUSION

Answer 4

stress hormones facilitate learning (up to a certain point)

Question 5

attentional focussing

Answer 5

• potential alternative mechanism to explain results
• focus on the main thing in an event due to increased adrenaline
• remember only the relevant stuff
• filter out irrelevant things
• but with too much adrenaline you filter out too much, so memory score goes down