Describe How Emotion Influences Memory For Details And How Non-emotional Events Are Remembered

Memory
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October 5, 2017
* Describe how emotion influences memory for details and how non-emotional events are remembered.
In the article written by Plous (1993), he discussed how our brain functions and remember non-emotional events, while comparing it with previously held beliefs and misconceptions about it. More particularly, he described memory as “reconstructive” rather than “recollective”. What this means is that most of the memories that we have are not exact copies of the events that have occurred, but are simply “created” from the “materials” of our thoughts, formed during the time of withdrawal. Aside from this, Plous also discussed studies done that classified memories as interconnected and linked, as compared to previous notions that it is stored in separate storages. In contrasts to emotional and traumatic events, the article written by McNally and Geraerts (2009), presented three possibilities in terms of how people deal and recover them. Namely, these three sides of the debate are; (1) repression interpretation, (2) false memory interpretation, and (3) a ‘hybrid’ theory which they proposed in response to the pitfalls of the previous two theories. While the first theory emphasizes the notion that victims of CSAs and other emotional abuse simply represses their feelings and find these instances as “abusive”, the other theory suggests that the perception that CSAs are abusive are simply reconstructed through psychotherapeutic methods such as “hypnosis, guided imagery, or other similar memory-recovery methods” (McNally & Geraerts, 2009). Nonetheless, in the end, McNally and Geraerts (2009), suggested that there exist particular instances when the recovered memories are real and genuine. According to them, what differentiates this view from the other two is the emphasis on the fact that not thinking about something is different from actually forgetting it. Thus, what this suggest is that emotional memories (whether genuine or not) are, at some instances, simply placed out of focus rather than forgotten. Among these three, the false-memory interpretation is the closest towards the theory of recollecting non-emotional events as presented by Plous. Going back to the previous discussion, it was stated that rather than being recollective, memory is indeed “reconstructive”. This is supported by the tenets of the False Memory Interpretation theory, which says that the recollections of CSAs and other emotional events are simply creations of our minds rather than copies of real life events.
* There has been a great deal of controversy on whether Freud’s theory of repressed memory is even possible. That is, in many laboratory studies the phenomenon of repressed memory cannot be seen. Why would that be the case?
Based on the Freudian theory of repressed emotion, it is generally believed that traumatic and emotional experiences of CSAs are retained within one’s mind for a long period of time. Following from this belief, many psychologists and psychoanalysts believe that in some cases, emotional and psychological problems are brought about by repressed memories acting...