The doctoral dissertation has two sections: a theoretical and an empirical one, about false memories (FM) and emotion. In the theoretical section, the general purpose was to review the literature about the impact of emotion on memory. The conflicting results from studies about FM and valence can be summarized as follows: (a) emotional events produce low rates of FM, and (b) emotional events produce high rates of FM. We identified memory processes that might be responsible for the valence effect on true(TM) and false memories (FM). The empirical section is composed by two experiments: (a) “The effect of valence on false memories under the DRM paradigm” and (b) “The role of attention in the effects of emotional valence in true and false memories”. The first study (a) was designed to investigate the influence of valence in the production of FM using the DRM paradigm under a divided attention manipulation. Two theoretical explanations for FM were compared: Distinctive Heuristic and Fuzzy-Trace Theory. The results suggested that valence impacted recognition memory responses. False memory rates were higher for negative information as compared to neutral and positive. Divided attention (DA) influenced TM performance but not FM. This result seems to indicate that DA negatively affects TM but as no effect on FM. The second paper (b) aimed examining the effects of valence on TM and FM and the cognitive mechanisms underlying these effects. Results indicated that participants’ valence ratings did not differ from the normed data. There was also no difference between attention groups (i. e., complete and divided) in the evaluation of the lists. So, it seems that DA did not interfere in the emotional processing. Regarding memory rates, the following results were obtained: (a) negative valence produced high rates of FM, and (b) DA affected TM, but not FM. These findings did not seem to indicate that the same cognitive mechanisms are responsible for the effect of valence on memory and the creation of FM. Nonetheless, semantic features can the involved in the effects of valence.
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