Our memories can differ in quality from one event to the next, and emotion is one important explanatory factor. Still, the manner in which emotion impacts episodic memory is complex: Whereas emotion enhances some aspects of episodic memory—particularly central aspects—it dampens memory for peripheral/contextual information. Extending previous work, we examined the effects of emotion on one often overlooked aspect of memory, namely, temporal context. We tested whether emotion would impair memory for when an event occurred. Participants (N = 116 adults) watched videos wherein negative and neutral images were inserted. Consistent with prior work, results showed that emotion enhanced and impaired memory, respectively, for “what” and “which.” Unexpectedly, emotion was associated with enhanced accuracy for “when”: We found that participants estimated that neutral images occurred relatively later, but there was no such bias for negative images. By examining multiple features of episodic memory, we provide a holistic characterization of the myriad effects of emotion.

我们的记忆在不同事件的质量上可能有所不同，而情绪是一个重要的解释因素。尽管如此，情绪影响情景记忆的方式仍然很复杂：虽然情绪增强了情景记忆的某些方面，尤其是核心方面，但它却削弱了对外围/情境信息的记忆。扩展之前的工作，我们研究了情绪对记忆中经常被忽视的一个方面（即时间背景）的影响。我们测试了情绪是否会损害事件发生时的记忆。参与者（ N = 116 名成人）观看了插入负面和中性图像的视频。与之前的研究一致，结果表明情绪分别增强和损害了“什么”和“哪个”的记忆。出乎意料的是，情绪与“何时”的准确性提高有关：我们发现参与者估计中性图像出现的时间相对较晚，但对于负面图像则没有这种偏差。通过检查情景记忆的多个特征，我们提供了情绪的多种影响的整体特征。