Enhancement of declarative memory associated with emotional content in a Brazilian sample

Several studies have documented that emotional arousal may enhance long-ter m memory. This is an adaptation of a paradigm previously used in North Amer ican and European samples in investigations of the influence of emotion on long-term retention. A sample of 46 healthy adults of high and low educatio nal levels watched a slide presentation of stories. A randomly assigned gro up watched a story with an or stones. A randomly assigned group watched a s tory with an arousing content and another group watched a neutral story. Th e stories were matched for structure and comprehensibility and the set and order of the 11 slides were the same in both conditions. Immediately after viewing the slide presentation, the participants were asked to rate the emo tionality of the narrative. The arousing narrative was rated as being more emotional than the neutral narrative (t (44)= -3.6, P<0.001). Ten days late r subjects were asked to remember the story and answer a multiple-choice qu estionnaire about it. The subjects who watched the arousing story had highe r scores in the free recall measure (t 144) = -2.59, P<0.01). There were no differences between groups in the multiple-choice test of recognition memo ry (t (44) = 0.26). These findings confirm that an emotional arousing conte nt enhances longterm declarative memory and indicate the possibility of app lying this instrument to clinical samples of various cultural backgrounds.