Emotional Modulation of Episodic Memory in School-Age Children and Adults: Emotional Items and Their Associated Contextual Details

It is well established that emotional events are better remembered than neutral events. However, little is known about emotional enhancement of memory (EEM) in children. This is particularly the case when the main components of episodic memory are considered: core information (item memory) and its associated contextual details (associative memory). In 2 experiments, the present study tested whether the negative or positive emotional valence of words and pictures can influence item and associative memory. The contextual information to be associated with items was the gender of the voice pronouncing words and the type of frame in which pictures were displayed in Experiment 1, and the spatial location of stimuli in Experiment 2. Two groups of 8- to 11-year-old children (Experiment 1 n = 32 and Experiment 2 n = 36) performed the experiments and were compared to two groups of equivalent numbers of young adults. Participants completed an intentional-encoding task followed by immediate item recognition, associative recall and item recall tasks. Over the two experiments and in both groups, the results revealed (a) no EEM for words and pictures in recognition tasks, (b) EEM for words in item recall and associative recall tasks, and (c) mixed results for pictures, with an EEM being observed in item recall tasks but not systematically in associative recall tasks. By extending the results over two types of stimuli and their associated contextual information, our study provides new knowledge concerning the effect of emotions on episodic memory in children, which seems to be similar to that observed in young adults.