Investigating memory for faces based on emotional contextual information

Contextual affective information can influence recognition memory. However, the influence of the order of this information on memory has rarely been studied. To investigate this, a series of faces were shown along with contextual person-based information. Each face was shown twice, manipulating the order of the affective contextual information: (1) emotional then neutral, (2) neutral then emotional, or (3) neutral and then neutral. The first study included negative contextual information and the second included positive information. One week later a recognition test was given for the faces. In both the negative study and the positive study, recognition memory was uninfluenced by condition, suggesting that the order in which affective information is presented is largely irrelevant. Further, exploratory Bayesian analyses revealed that faces paired with the highest arousal sentences at encoding were the least likely to be recognized at retrieval, which may represent a biasing of attention towards the high-arousal sentence and away from the low-arousal face.