Abstract
Research has demonstrated that arousal can strongly affect memory, especially during the encoding process (Geen, 1971). This study hypothesized that the arousal caused by a personal space violation would impair immediate word-pair recall scores compared to mere presence or alone conditions. Participants memorized a word-pair list alone or with another person sitting 152 cm or 13 cm away, completed a distraction task for 7 min, and free-recalled one word of each pair while alone. No significant effects were found for distance conditions, but women scored significantly higher than men. Results indicated that arousal effects may be mediated when the source of arousal can be justified.
Introduction
Many people try to read when riding the subway. However, after reading the same paragraphs three times in a row, they cannot remember anything. The man snoring next to them, the attractive stranger across the car, or the rancid air is making concentration nearly impossible. These distracting stimuli are causing arousal which is affecting their ability to keep their attention on the task before them.
Arousal is a physiological state caused in part by neural activity throughout the brain. As a result of traveling nerve impulses, aroused people exhibit increased heart rate, muscle tone, respiration, and hormone release from the pituitary and adrenal gland (Foote, 2000). Not only does arousal affect physical conditions, but also mental functions such as memory (Moray, 1959). For instance, arousal impairs encoding by narrowing the learner's attention to the arousing stimulus (such as distracting noise), instead of the stimuli to be encoded (such as a word list) (Easterbrook, 1959; Geen, 1971; Kelley & Gorham, 1988). In addition, arousal impairs memory storage by altering the neural pathways through which information is stored (Foote, 2000; Gregory, 1987). However, research has demonstrated that arousal has little effect during retrieval (Troyer & Craik, 2000).
Situational differences can result in varied memory effects from arousal (Sanders, Baron, & Moore, 1978; Geen, 1971). An example of situational differences is task difficulty. When encoding tasks are easy, high arousal increases retrieval compared to low arousal, whereas when encoding tasks are difficult, high arousal decreases retrieval compared to low arousal (Sanders, et al., 1978). Other studies have examined situations in which recall, the ability to reproduce information that has been encoded and stored, is tested at different time intervals after the encoding task (Berlyne, Borsa, Craw, Gelman, & Mandell, 1965; Butter, 1970; Geen, 1971; McLean, 1969; Troyer & Craik, 2000). Individuals not aroused while encoding difficult verbal word-pairs showed better immediate recall (2-40 min after encoding) than those highly aroused. However, delayed recall (at least 40 min after encoding) was better for individuals who were highly aroused (Butter, 1970; Deffenbacher, Platt, & Williams, 1974; Geen, 1971). In other words, high arousal makes immediate recall worse. Connections between task difficulty and testing intervals have not been made and theories for the differences have not yet been supported (Geen, 1971).
In past research on memory and arousal, arousal has been induced by various stimuli, such as white noise (Berlyne et al., 1965), offensive words (Butter, 1970), or the presence of others (Deffenbacher et al., 1974; Geen, 1971). When examining the effects of the presence of others, the experimenter (Deffenbacher et al., 1974; Kelley & Gorham, 1988), coactors (Elliot & Cohen, 1981), or observers (Geen, 1971) have been used to induce arousal. Despite the consistent use of another's presence as an arousing stimulus, some research has found that the mere presence of others does not cause physiological arousal (Kline, 2000).
However, personal space violations greatly increase arousal as evidenced by increased skin conductance and heart rate (Karlin & Epstein, 1979), increased hand tremors (Russo, 1967), increased behavioral signs of stress (Kanaga & Flynn, 1981), and decreased performance on a vowel-canceling task (Sinha & Sinha, 1991). Yet, despite the research on presence effects, the arousing effect of personal space violations on recall has been studied by very few (Kelley & Gorham, 1988). In Kelley and Gorham's (1988) study, an experimenter was present both during encoding and recall. During both processes, the experimenter induced either high or low arousal through nonverbal actions. Participants who experienced high arousal remembered more words at a 2 s testing interval than those experiencing low arousal.
Based on previous research, we felt that Kelley and Gorham's (1988) testing methods were unclear (Sanders et al., 1978). They had various confounding variables such as having a person present at both encoding and recall and using the experimenter as the presence leading to potential authority and audience confounds (Huguet, Galvaing, Monteil, & Dumas, 1999). As a result, we chose to reduce these variables by inducing arousal only during encoding with a non-authoritative, non-observing peer. We used a 7 min recall interval, requiring a longer and deeper memory than Kelley and Gorham's (1988) 2 s interval. In light of these changes, we predicted that immediate recall scores for word-pairs encoded alone or in the mere presence of a confederate would be higher than word-pairs encoded during a personal space violation (PSV), with no differences between the Mere Presence (MP) and Alone conditions.
Methods
Participants
Participants were 27 male and 25 female undergraduates who participated in exchange for a small amount of extra credit in an introductory psychology class. The Alone condition had 8 men and 9 women; the MP condition had 10 men and 7 women; the PSV condition had 9 men and 9 women. They had a mean college grade point average of 3.10.
Materials
The encoding task utilized a word list of 30 frequently-used, two-syllable nouns (Kilgarriff, 1998). The nouns were randomly paired with no obvious associations (see Appendix A). The recall task provided the first word of each pair, in a different order than on the word list, requiring free recall of the second word. Recall scores were determined by the number of correctly recalled pairs out of 15. Pilot tests showed that 3 min of encoding time produced a mean recall score of 9.00 pairs after a 10 min recall interval.
A distraction task was developed to ensure word-pairs were stored for an extended period of time without opportunity for rehearsal. This task consisted of 15 problems of 2- or 3-digit multiplication and 12 problems of 2- or 3-digits divided by 1- or 2-digits taken from a 6th grade mathematics textbook (Haubner, Rathmell, & Super, 1992).
A 10-item post-task questionnaire included 2 demographic questions and a manipulation check item. The manipulation check questioned "how far away was the other person in the room while you were memorizing word pairs?" providing the optional answers of "very close," "moderately close," "no other person." The other 7 items focused on concentration, word memorization, and math computation. Participants rated the difficulty of these constructs on 5-point Likert scale from 1 (agree) to 5 (disagree).
A circular table (diameter 106 cm) with 2 chairs (13 cm apart) was on one side of the testing room (1.83 m X 7.74 m), and another chair was 152 cm away, facing the chairs at the table (see Figure 1).
Procedure
Participants arrived individually and were told that the purpose of the study was to test word memory and math skills. After obtaining informed consent, the experimenter brought each participant to the testing room and stated that another person might enter because the room was also being used for a different study. Participants sat at the table, received the word-pair list, and memorized the list for 3 min. After 20 s, a female confederate of similar age and ethnicity to the participants was brought into the testing room. To reduce participant suspicion, the experimenter verbally instructed the confederate to sit in a chair and read a photocopied story. In the PSV condition, the confederate sat next to the participant at the table. In the MP condition, she sat in the distant chair. No confederate was present in the Alone condition.
After 3 min, the experimenter entered, took the word list, and gave participants the math problems. If a confederate was present, the experimenter asked her to leave (to prevent arousal during recall (Troyer & Craik, 2000)). The experimenter told participants to accurately complete as many problems as possible in 7 min. Pilot study participants indicated that 10 min was a frustratingly long time for the math problems, so the distraction task time was shortened for the present study.
After 7 min, the experimenter gave participants the word recall task and told them they had 3 min to complete it. After the recall task, participants completed the questionnaire and were debriefed.
Results
One participant in the PSV condition misunderstood the encoding task, so his data were not analyzed. The manipulation check showed that all MP and Alone condition participants correctly identified the manipulation. A surprisingly high number (22%) of the PSV condition participants misidentified the presence and/or distance of the other person in the room. However, their data were still analyzed because each of these participants visibly looked at the confederate; therefore, the assumption is that the manipulation question was misunderstood.
This study tested whether arousal due to a personal space violation during encoding would decrease word-pair recall when compared to MP or Alone conditions. The mean recall score across conditions was 7.65 (SD = 3.54), suggesting that the task was sufficiently difficult. As recall scores increased, reported ease of concentrating on word-pairs significantly increased, r(51) =.44, p < .05 , as did reported difficulty in memorizing, r(51) = -.42, p < .05. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) indicated that recall scores were not significantly affected by distance condition, F(2, 48) = 0.20, p = .82. An exploratory factorial ANOVA indicated that across conditions women (M = 8.84, SD = 3.53) had significantly higher recall scores than men (M = 6.81, SD = 3.00), F(1, 45) = 4.44, p < .05 (see Figure 2). Distance condition was not significant either as a main effect, F(2, 45) = .16, p = .85, or in interaction with gender, F(1, 45) = 2.40, p =.10. Contrary to expectation, arousal due to personal space violation did not affect recall scores.
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to determine whether arousal due to the presence of others during encoding would decrease recall of word-pair scores. We predicted that immediate (7 min) recall scores for word-pair lists would be lower in the PSV condition than scores in the MP or Alone conditions. Our results showed that recall was not significantly affected by personal space violations or the presence of others compared to being alone. Results also showed that women scored significantly higher than men on the recall task.
Previous research indicates that immediate recall scores are lower when a confederate is present than when the participant is alone (Geen, 1971). Geen (1971) used immediate (2 min) and delayed (45 min) recall tests to explore the effects of an observing confederate while encoding nonsense syllables. Results indicated that when participants were observed they scored low on the immediate test and high on the delayed test. However, when participants were alone, the scores were opposite-high on the immediate test and low on the delayed test. We expected a 7 min testing interval to reflect the results Geen (1971) found on the 2 min test (i.e., confederate resulting in a lower recall score). However, based on the interaction of Geen's (1971) results, 7 min may have been an intermediate time where no effect was evident because it was not short enough to perceive an effect on immediate recall or long enough to perceive an effect on delayed recall. Testing recall again 40 min later could have strengthened our study by showing an interaction between testing intervals and distance conditions.
Other explanations for the non-significant difference between the distance conditions are arousal attribution and cognitive interpretation (Smith & Knowles, 1979; Worchel & Yohai, 1979). Participants in the PSV condition may have experienced high arousal; however, if they attributed this arousal to the event of being in an experiment, they may have cognitively reduced arousal levels (Weinberg & Gould, 1999). According to previous research, a reduction in arousal during a difficult task will increase performance (Sanders, et al., 1978). In addition, participants may have justified the confederate's unusually close presence by assuming she was obeying the experimenter's command to sit in the chair ( Myers, 1999). This cognitive interpretation of the personal space violation could have also allowed participants to reduce their arousal level (Smith & Knowles, 1979). The cover story explaining the confederate's presence may have enhanced participant justification for the confederate's invading actions and therefore decreased arousal levels.
Finding that women scored significantly higher than men on a word-pair recall task agreed with other research (Baxter, 2000; Casiere & Ashton, 1996). Baxter found that women had significantly higher verbal memory scores than men, suggesting that women incorporate verbal organizational strategies when they encode information. Another possible explanation is that women were less aroused than men because the confederate was female (Patterson, Mullens, & Romano, 1971). Further research on how gender affects memory processes is needed.
Research on how presence-induced arousal affects encoding and recall could be continued in several ways. First, physiological measures, such as heart rate or galvanic skin responses, could be measured to determine specific arousal levels at different interpersonal distances. This would give a more complete understanding of the effects from actual arousal, not merely assumed or perceived arousal. Second, the effects of a male confederate could be tested. Men cause more arousal than women when invading personal space of both sexes (McBride, King, & James, 1965), so a male confederate may increase impairment of encoding relative to a female. Finally, the effects of arousal on additional types of memory could be examined. Testing participant's recall of the confederate's clothing or the room's attributes could reveal whether arousal narrowed attention during encoding to unrelated information instead of the memory task at hand (Kelley & Gorham, 1988).
In conclusion, the connection between arousal and memory is not simple. Different levels of arousal, task difficulty, and attributions for one's arousal complexly influence various types and stages of memory. Further research needs to be done to uncover the specific situations in which arousal affects memory.
Appendix A
| Word List | |
| Office | Research |
| Women | Member |
| Market | Father |
| Something | Moment |
| Process | Police |
| Water | Pencil |
| Problem | Money |
| Number | Report |
| Party | Children |
| Business | Today |
| Public | Mother |
| Service | Question |
| Body | Power |
| System | Local |
| Country | Person |
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