Enhanced recognition memory for emotional nonverbal sounds

Emotion often enhances memory for emotional stimuli relative to neutral stimuli. This emotional memory enhancement effect has been studied extensively with visual and verbal stimuli, yet relatively little is known regarding emotion’s effects on memory for environmental (nonverbal) sounds such as snarling dogs and infant cries. Emotion’s enhancing effects on recognition for visual and verbal stimuli are selective to recollection (recognition accompanied by contextual retrieval) rather than familiarity (recognition based on memory strength), but it is unknown whether this is also the case for environmental sounds. We examined recognition memory for negative and neutral environmental sounds, predicting that memory would be enhanced for negative sounds and would be specific to recollection. Participants incidentally encoded negative and neutral sounds, and memory was tested with a remember-familiar recognition memory task after a 15-minute delay. As predicted, recognition memory was enhanced for negative sounds, was better for higher versus lower arousal negative sounds, and was specific to recollection. These findings suggest that key aspects of the emotional enhancement effect also extend to environmental sounds. We discuss how current theoretical models of emotional memory which focus on memory for visual and verbal stimuli can be extended to accommodate findings with nonverbal emotional auditory stimuli.