Emotional salience modulates the forward flow of memory

Conditional response probability (CRP) analyses applied to free recall data indicate that recall occurs for contiguous items with forward-directionality, thought to reflect the shared encoding context of nearby items. We hypothesized that a context disruption, produced by presenting infrequent oddballs, would modulate CRP curves, increasing the forward-flow of recall due to strong binding of items presented after these oddballs to the new encoding context. Seventy young, healthy male and female participants encoded word lists containing either emotional or perceptual oddballs at varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) followed by free recall. Serial recall transitions from emotional, but not perceptual, oddballs were enhanced in the forward direction except at the shortest SOA (1s). The present results provide empirical evidence of CRP modulation selectively by emotional salience and suggest that recall patterns after presenting emotional and perceptual oddballs are mediated by different mechanisms.