Effects of emotion and perspective on remembering events: An eye-tracking study

The main objective of this study is to investigate the effects of the emotional content of an event and participants’ perspective on the memory and eye-tracking measurements for central and peripheral de-tails. The data have been collected from 130 undergraduate male students (18- 33 ages). Three se...

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Main Authors: Çiğdem Gülçay, Banu Cangöz
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2016-02-01
Series:Journal of Eye Movement Research
Subjects:
Online Access:https://bop.unibe.ch/JEMR/article/view/2464
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author Çiğdem Gülçay
Banu Cangöz
author_facet Çiğdem Gülçay
Banu Cangöz
author_sort Çiğdem Gülçay
collection DOAJ
description The main objective of this study is to investigate the effects of the emotional content of an event and participants’ perspective on the memory and eye-tracking measurements for central and peripheral de-tails. The data have been collected from 130 undergraduate male students (18- 33 ages). Three series of seven different emotional thematic photographs (positive, negative, neutral) were used. Participants were subjected to only one of the three series, either in his own perspective condition or observer perspective condition. During the presentation of thematic photograph series participants’ eye movements were re-corded. All analysis for memory and eye-tracking measurements were carried out with 3 (Emotional Content: Positive, Negative, Neutral) X 2 (Participants’ perspective: Own perspective, observer perspec-tive) between-subjects factorial ANOVA. The results indicated that although central and peripheral de-tails took almost equal attention in both negative and neutral events, only details of the negative event was remembered better. In addition, when compared to negative and neutral events participants looked longer at positive event’s central details as well as peripheral details, only details of negative event were remembered better. Consequently, memory enhancement effect occured only in negative emotional event both for central and peripheral details, even though participants paid less or equal attention these details. In addition to effects of emotion, it was seen that like autobiographical memory (Nigro and Neisser, 1983) participants’ perspective has also an effect on event memory and attention measured by eye-tracking. According to eye-tracking results looking with his own perspective to the event causes narrowing of attention while looking with observer’s perspective to event causes extending of attention. In memory results it was seen that participants in his own perspective condition remembered central details better than participants in the observer condition. In conclusion, it is observed that enhanced memory for neg-ative emotional event can occur independently of attention, so it could be said that attention is not suffi-cient by itself to remember an event with details, emotional dimension of the event has a decisive role. Additionally, perspective have an effect on attention as well as event memory.
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spelling doaj-art-7ee4cbcfd0784aa790989c0bab1987932025-08-20T02:56:45ZengMDPI AGJournal of Eye Movement Research1995-86922016-02-019210.16910/jemr.9.2.4Effects of emotion and perspective on remembering events: An eye-tracking studyÇiğdem Gülçay0Banu Cangöz1Uludağ Universityi, TurkeyHacettepe Universityi, TurkeyThe main objective of this study is to investigate the effects of the emotional content of an event and participants’ perspective on the memory and eye-tracking measurements for central and peripheral de-tails. The data have been collected from 130 undergraduate male students (18- 33 ages). Three series of seven different emotional thematic photographs (positive, negative, neutral) were used. Participants were subjected to only one of the three series, either in his own perspective condition or observer perspective condition. During the presentation of thematic photograph series participants’ eye movements were re-corded. All analysis for memory and eye-tracking measurements were carried out with 3 (Emotional Content: Positive, Negative, Neutral) X 2 (Participants’ perspective: Own perspective, observer perspec-tive) between-subjects factorial ANOVA. The results indicated that although central and peripheral de-tails took almost equal attention in both negative and neutral events, only details of the negative event was remembered better. In addition, when compared to negative and neutral events participants looked longer at positive event’s central details as well as peripheral details, only details of negative event were remembered better. Consequently, memory enhancement effect occured only in negative emotional event both for central and peripheral details, even though participants paid less or equal attention these details. In addition to effects of emotion, it was seen that like autobiographical memory (Nigro and Neisser, 1983) participants’ perspective has also an effect on event memory and attention measured by eye-tracking. According to eye-tracking results looking with his own perspective to the event causes narrowing of attention while looking with observer’s perspective to event causes extending of attention. In memory results it was seen that participants in his own perspective condition remembered central details better than participants in the observer condition. In conclusion, it is observed that enhanced memory for neg-ative emotional event can occur independently of attention, so it could be said that attention is not suffi-cient by itself to remember an event with details, emotional dimension of the event has a decisive role. Additionally, perspective have an effect on attention as well as event memory.https://bop.unibe.ch/JEMR/article/view/2464emotionperspectiveevent memoryfree recallattentioneye-tracking
spellingShingle Çiğdem Gülçay
Banu Cangöz
Effects of emotion and perspective on remembering events: An eye-tracking study
Journal of Eye Movement Research
emotion
perspective
event memory
free recall
attention
eye-tracking
title Effects of emotion and perspective on remembering events: An eye-tracking study
title_full Effects of emotion and perspective on remembering events: An eye-tracking study
title_fullStr Effects of emotion and perspective on remembering events: An eye-tracking study
title_full_unstemmed Effects of emotion and perspective on remembering events: An eye-tracking study
title_short Effects of emotion and perspective on remembering events: An eye-tracking study
title_sort effects of emotion and perspective on remembering events an eye tracking study
topic emotion
perspective
event memory
free recall
attention
eye-tracking
url https://bop.unibe.ch/JEMR/article/view/2464
work_keys_str_mv AT cigdemgulcay effectsofemotionandperspectiveonrememberingeventsaneyetrackingstudy
AT banucangoz effectsofemotionandperspectiveonrememberingeventsaneyetrackingstudy