Relationship Between Emotion Regulation and Memory in a Competitive Cued-Recall Task

Abstract

Emotion regulation might have an impact on memory performance. Nevertheless, there is still no clear relationship between the type of emotion regulation strategy and the type of information recalled. An experiment was conducted involving 194 participants that performed an online task in which they had to recall three kinds of words (positive, negative, and neutral), with competitive recall cues (first letter), as the same cue was used for a word in each emotional category. They also answered three instruments for measuring emotion regulation (Emotion Regulation Question naire, ERQ), deficits in emotion regulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, DERS), and af fective state (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, PANAS). The results showed that participants with higher (vs. lower) levels in cognitive reappraisal performed better at recalling positive words. In turn, deficits in emotion regulation were linked to a weaker performance when recalling words with an emotional content, particularly the dimension of interference in recalling negative words. The results are discussed from the perspective of the processes involved in emotion regulation, while also considering the more stable skill-related aspects when controlling emotions.