The effects of emotional valence and emotional arousal on event-based prospective memory in young adults

The main aim of the current study was to examine the effects of emotional valence and emotional arousal on event-based prospective memory (EB-PM) among young adults. A total of 63 young adults aged between 18 to 30 participated in the study. The study was conducted in two sessions. In the first online session, participants filled out an online survey that included a Demographical Information Form and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Participants for the second experimental session was recruited from young adults who did not report any psychiatric or neurological disorder within the past six months, did not have intense fears for specific contents (e.g., snakes, dogs, heights, etc.), and got scores of 16 and below from the BDI. The second session consisted of a computer-based EB-PM task in which participants' PM performance was measured for pictures from different emotional categories (i.e., positive-high arousal, positive-low arousal, neutral, negative-high arousal, and negative-low arousal) selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Within the EB-PM task, a PM task was embedded in a 1-back working memory task, and both correct responses and reaction times were recorded. Besides, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Coding Test were applied as filler tasks between the instructions and the EB-PM task. Moreover, a recognition task and Post-Experimental Questionnaire was administered at the end of the EB-PM task. The results showed that the main effects of both emotional valence and emotional arousal, as well as their interaction, on PM accuracy were significant. Moreover, the main effects of both dimensions on reaction times in the PM task were significant. However, the interaction effect of these dimensions on reaction times was not significant. In addition, the correlation between PM task performance and 1-back working memory task performance was significant in terms of reaction times, but no correlation was found for accuracy. Regarding the PANAS scores, only the negative affect scores were negatively correlated with overall PM accuracy. No other correlations between PANAS scores and PM task performance were found. The findings from the current study were evaluated and discussed in relation to the relevant literature.