MOOD AS A MEDIATOR OF PLACE DEPENDENT MEMORY

Converging evidence from 3 studies suggests that how well information transfers from one environment to another depends on how similar the e nvironments feel rather than on how similar they look. Thus, even when target events are encoded and retrieved in the same physical setting, memory performance suffers if the attending affective states differ. Conversely, a change in environment produces no performance decrement if, whether by chance (Experiments 1 and 2) or by design (Experiment 3 ), the mood at encoding matches the mood at retrieval. These observati ons imply that place dependent effects are mediated by alterations in affect or mood, and that data that appear on the surface to demonstrat e place dependent memory may, at a deeper level, denote the presence o f mood dependent memory. Discussion focuses on prospects for future re search aimed at clarifying the relations among moods, places, and memo ry.