This study probes whether a prosopagnosic patient can make accurate explicit affective judgements towards faces. Patient MJH was shown photographs of faces of well-liked family members and public figures rated as “evil” by opinion polls. MJH was asked to rate each face on two 7-point scales (Likeability and Pleasantness). Since he is unable to explicitly recognise faces, his ratings were based on his evaluative reaction to the faces presented. In a second phase of the experiment, MJH was told the name (...) of the faces previously presented and asked to rate them using the same scales. MJH's Likeability ratings during the picture-viewing phase of the experiment and the explicit phase were highly correlated. Based on these findings, we propose that thought consists of an explicit declarative and an implicit emotional aspect, which may become dissociated in prosopagnosia. (shrink)

Emotional stimuli (e.g. words, images) are often remembered better than neutral stimuli. However, little is known about how memory is affected by an environmentally induced emotional state (without any overtly emotional occurrences) – the focus of this study. Participants were randomly assigned to discovery (n = 305) and replication (n = 306) subsamples and viewed a desktop virtual environment before rating their emotions and completing objective (i.e. item, temporal-order, duration) and subjective (e.g. vividness, sensory detail, coherence) memory measures. In both (...) samples, a Partial Least Squares Correlation analysis showed that an emotional state characterised by high negative emotion (i.e. threat, fear, anxiety) and arousal was reliably associated with better memory in both objective (i.e. item) and subjective (i.e. vividness and sensory detail) domains. No reliable associations were observed for any temporal memory measures (objective or subjective). Thus, an environmentally induced state of negative emotion corresponds with enhanced memory for indices of episodic memory pertaining to “what” happened, but not necessarily “when” it happened. (shrink)