A puzzle about affect and recognition memory

Conducted an experiment to replicate an unpredicted and puzzling asymmetry found in the data of surprise recognition tests given in several earlier, unpublished experiments. The present experiment, with 12 undergraduates, used foils that were affective transformations of presented sentences. The affectively negative foils consistently produced a significantly higher rate of correct rejections than did the positive foils. This effect occurred in the absence of a difference in hit rates between positive and negative sentences. It is argued that the results cannot be accounted for in terms of factors (such as sentence integratedness or congruence) that affect memorability. An explanation in terms of differential changes in the strength of affective responses to positive and negative sentences is proposed as a possible way of accommodating the data. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).