睡眠对违反道德的负性情绪记忆的调节

Regulation of overnight sleep on negative emotion memory with moral-violation

记忆是信息加工的基础,违反道德事件作为记忆的重要内容,往往诱发了个体较强的负性情绪.负面情绪记忆的加工是影响个人心理健康的重要因素,创伤后应激障碍人群表现出对记忆主动操纵的失衡,长期处于负性情绪之中会导致身心健康受到极大的影响.但目前违反道德的负性情绪记忆进行主动操纵的具体表现仍不为人所知.本研究基于记忆线索操纵范式,在负性情绪基础上纳入违反道德维度,探究个体对违反道德和一般的负性情绪记忆进行主动操纵的表现差异.另一方面,睡眠巩固后的负性情绪记忆存在区别于新获得记忆的抑制机制,研究进一步考察睡眠对不同负性情绪记忆效果的影响.结果发现:(1)人们更愿意主动抑制新获取的违反道德的负性情绪记忆,而对一般负性情绪记忆则更容易去提取.(2)经历睡眠后,一般负性情绪记忆的提取效应和违反道德的负性情绪的抑制效应均被削弱.实验结果表明了违反道德和一般负性情绪记忆在巩固与抑制的主动操纵效应上所存在的差异,以及睡眠对两种负性情绪记忆操纵效应差异的调节作用,增进了我们对于道德情绪记忆经睡眠后储存、提取和抑制表现的认识.

The processing of negative emotion memory is a key factor influencing human mental health and the ability to manipulate negative emotion memory is crucial for mental health.It is beneficial for individuals to be highly motivated to successfully forget an unpleasant experience.However,people with post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD)often show an imbalance in voluntary memory manipulation.They are unable to regulate memories of emotions and are exposed to negative emotions for a longer time,which over time will lead to greater damage to both physical and mental health.Witnessing moral violation may induce negative emotions in real life,but it is still unknown if when faced with memories of negative emotions associated with moral violation content,whether the process of suppression and recall manipulation would be different for non-moral content.A previous study found that overnight sleep could weaken the effect of suppression on memory.In the present study,we first selected 120 pictures and recruited participants to rate their emotional arousal,valence,and morality on a 9-point scale in an online survey.After selecting and matching negative emotional stimuli with similar emotional arousal and valence and distinguishable morality(non-moral vs.moral-violation)in the online ratings,28 participants were required to remember the stimuli paired with the cue objects after two days’training(overnight sleep vs.newly acquired condition)and then they had a think/no-think task(TNT)(recall vs.suppression vs.baseline)to intuitively suppress and recall these pairs.After the TNT task,a recall test was conducted to record vocal memory performance,which was scored by three scorers.The scorer reliability was measured,and showed high quality.We determined the recall score by computing the difference between recall accuracy and baseline accuracy,and found the suppression score to be the difference between suppression accuracy and baseline accuracy.Then a 2×2×2 repeated measures ANOVA with withinsubject factors of training time,cue manipulation,and morality was performed.The results of the repeated measures ANOVA and the paired t-test analyses showed that memory could be adjusted through conscious cue manipulation,and negative memory with different moral content had significantly different manipulation effects.Specifically,in the newly acquired condition,the recall score in non-moral memory was significantly higher than both zero and the recall score in moral violation,while the suppression score in moral violation memory was both significantly lower than zero and marginally lower than the suppression score in non-moral pairs.Additionally,compared with the newly acquired condition,both the memory enhanced effect in the non-moral pairs and the memory forgotten effect in the moral violation memory pairs faded in the overnight sleep condition.Our findings revealed that both the retrieval of non-moral content and the suppression of moral violation content in negative emotion memories were significant when newly acquired;and overnight sleep could eliminate the influences of retrieval and suppression manipulation.These results manifest the effects of morality on negative emotion memory which can be weakened by overnight sleep consolidation.The present study extends our understanding of how moral emotional memories are stored,retrieved,and repressed after sleep.