This dissertation sought to examine whether affective states influence how we learn and remember events we have experienced. Everyday experiences involve a constant interplay of perception and memory. For instance, Hunt and Einstein (1981) argue that encoding items can take two forms, item-specific and relational processing. An item-specific processing approach encodes individual items and their features, whereas a relational processing approach encodes relationships among concepts. In these situations affective cues may serve to switch between relational processing and item-specific processing. Specifically, the affect-as-information hypothesis predicts that individuals experiencing positive affective cues encode items in relation to an accessible cognition, whereas individuals experiencing negative affective cues encode items in an item-specific manner (Clore et al., 2001a). To test this hypothesis, I used a false memory task that depends on relational processing to produce false memories (Roediger, Watson, McDermott, & Gallo, 2001). For all experiments, positive and negative moods were induced prior to learning various word lists. In Experiment 1, I observed that negative moods reduced occurrence of false memories. Experiment 2 manipulated the false memory instructions, and Experiment 3 manipulated the timing of the mood induction. The results of Experiments 2 and 3 provided evidence to suggest that affective states influenced encoding processes, which led to the negative mood groups producing fewer false memories. In Experiment 4, I found direct evidence that affective states influenced processing styles (relational vs. item-specific). I suggest that positive affective states trigger relational processing, whereas negative affective states trigger item-specific processing, thus leading to differences in how information is encoded and remembered.
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机译：本文试图研究情感状态是否影响我们学习和记忆经历的事件。每天的经验涉及感知和记忆的不断相互作用。例如，亨特和爱因斯坦（Hunt and Einstein，1981）认为编码项目可以采用两种形式，即项目特定和关系处理。项目特定的处理方法对单个项目及其特征进行编码，而关系处理方法对概念之间的关系进行编码。在这些情况下，情感提示可用于在关系处理和特定项处理之间切换。具体来说，“以信息为依据”的假设预测，经历积极情感线索的个体会根据可访问的认知来编码项目，而经历消极情感线索的个体会以特定于项目的方式对事物进行编码（Clore等人，2001a）。为了检验这个假设，我使用了一个错误记忆任务，该任务依赖于关系处理来产生错误记忆（Roediger，Watson，McDermott和Gallo，2001）。对于所有实验，在学习各种单词列表之前都会诱发积极和消极的情绪。在实验1中，我观察到负面情绪减少了错误记忆的发生。实验2操纵错误的记忆指令，实验3操纵情绪诱导的时间。实验2和3的结果提供了证据，表明情感状态影响了编码过程，从而导致负面情绪群体产生更少的错误记忆。在实验4中，我发现直接的证据表明情感状态会影响处理方式（关系式与项目特定式）。我建议，积极的情感状态会触发关系处理，而消极的情感状态会触发特定项目的处理，从而导致信息编码和记忆方式的差异。
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