The Impact of Emotion on Learners' Application of Basic Science Principles to Novel Problems.

PURPOSE: Training to become a physician is an emotionally laden experience. Research in cognitive psychology indicates that emotions can influence learning and performance, but the materials used in such research (e.g., word lists) rarely reflect the complexity of material presented in medical school. The present study examined whether emotions influence learning of basic science principles. METHOD: Fifty-five undergraduate psychology students were randomly assigned to write about positive, negative, or neutral life events for nine minutes. Participants were then taught three physiological concepts, each in the context of a single organ system. Testing consisted of 13 clinical cases, 7 presented with the same concept/organ system pairing used during training ("near transfer") and 6 with novel pairings ("far transfer"). Testing was repeated after one week with 13 additional cases. RESULTS: Forty-nine students provided complete data. Higher test scores were found when the concept/organ system pairing was held constant (near transfer = 51% correct vs. far = 33%; P < .001). Emotion condition influenced participants' overall performance, with individuals in the neutral condition (50.1%) performing better than those in the positive (38.2%, P < .05) and negative (37.7%, P < .001) emotion conditions. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that regardless of whether the emotion is positive or negative, mild affective states can impair learning of basic science concepts by novices. Demands on working memory and subsequent cognitive load provide a potential explanation. Future work will examine the extent to which these findings generalize to medical trainees.

Females scan more than males: a potential mechanism for sex differences in recognition memory.

Recognition-memory tests reveal individual differences in episodic memory; however, by themselves, these tests provide little information regarding the stage (or stages) in memory processing at which differences are manifested. We used eye-tracking technology, together with a recognition paradigm, to achieve a more detailed analysis of visual processing during encoding and retrieval. Although this approach may be useful for assessing differences in memory across many different populations, we focused on sex differences in face memory. Females outperformed males on recognition-memory tests, and this advantage was directly related to females' scanning behavior at encoding. Moreover, additional exposures to the faces reduced sex differences in face recognition, which suggests that males may be able to improve their recognition memory by extracting more information at encoding through increased scanning. A strategy of increased scanning at encoding may prove to be a simple way to enhance memory performance in other populations with memory impairment.

The next generation: the value of reminding.

In two experiments, we investigated the influence of repeated processing in the context of the generation effect. In both experiments, participants studied words once or twice. Once-studied words either were read or were generated from a definition. Twice-studied words were read both times, generated both times, or read once and generated once. Free recall was best (in order of decreasing performance) after generating twice, after generating plus reading, and finally after generating once; any generation was better than purely reading. Recognition showed a similar pattern, except that the benefit of generating twice was not as striking as in recall and that reading plus generating was just as effective as generating twice. The overall pattern of results is accounted for by a simple model in which a second encoding results in a reminding of the first encoding, and this additional encoding supports subsequent recollection. This reminding is, consequently, more effective in recall than in recognition, and it operates in accordance with the principles of transfer-appropriate processing.