Temporal memory for threatening events encoded in a haunted house

ABSTRACT

Despite the salient experience of encoding threatening events, these memories are prone to distortions and often non-veridical from encoding to recall. Further, threat has been shown to preferentially disrupt the binding of event details and enhance goal-relevant information. While extensive work has characterised distinctive features of emotional memory, research has not fully explored the influence threat has on temporal memory, a process putatively supported by the binding of event details into a temporal context. Two primary competing hypotheses have been proposed; that threat can impair or enhance temporal memory. We analysed two datasets to assess temporal memory for an in-person haunted house experience. In study 1, we examined the temporal structure of memory by characterising memory contiguity in free recall as a function of individual levels of heart rate as a proxy of threat. In study 2, we replicated marginal findings of threat-related increases in memory contiguity found in study 1. We extended these findings by showing threat-related increases in recency discriminations, an explicit test of temporal memory. Together, these findings demonstrate that threat enhances temporal memory regarding free recall structure and during explicit memory judgments.

KEYWORDS:

• Temporal memory
• episodic memory
• fear memory
• aversive memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by NSF 2123474 (PI: VPM) and NIH F31MH129073 (PI: DFG). We also thank the research assistants who assisted in data collection, including Ange Vittone, Kathryn Lockwood, and Isabel Leiva.