ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to review some of the empirical findings in the study of memory for emotional events, focusing on memory for negative emotional or traumatic events. Two claims are contrasted: that negative emotional events are remembered in exceptional detail, and that emotional stress leads to a general impairment in memory. Some recent research is presented that may bridge the gap between these apparently contradictory conclusions. This chapter also discusses the possibility that emotion influences early perceptual processing (e.g., factors related to arousal and affect, the distinctiveness or unusualness of a certain event, attentional or preattentive factors), and late conceptual processing (e.g., poststimulus elaboration). This latter discussion is admittedly speculative, but the intention here is to stimulate new theoretical and empirical efforts rather than to provide a complete understanding of the impact of negative emotions on memory.
