Beyond Arousal: New Findings in Emotional Facilitation of Memory

Memory for gist (free-recall), visual detail, and low-level feature fidelity for emotion-evoking images was tested in two studies (total N=258). Results revealed enhanced recall for low-arousal images and positive vibrancy bias for awe-evoking images, unaccounted for by arousal-based explanations, pointing toward alternative mechanisms for emotional memory enhancement.