Whilst research has largely focused on the recognition of emotional items, emotion may be a more subtle part of our surroundings and conveyed by context rather than by items. Using ERPs, we investigated which effects an arousing context during encoding may have for item-context binding and subsequent familiarity-based and recollection-based item-memory. It has been suggested that arousal could facilitate item-context bindings and by this enhance the contribution of recollection to subsequent memory judgements. Alternatively, arousal could shift attention onto central features of a scene and by this foster unitisation during encoding. This could boost the contribution of familiarity to remembering. Participants learnt neutral objects paired with ecologically highly valid emotional faces whose names later served as neutral cues during an immediate and delayed test phase. Participants identified objects faster when they had originally been studied together with emotional context faces. Items with both neutral and emotional context elicited an early frontal ERP old/new difference (200-400 ms). Neither the neurophysiological correlate for familiarity nor recollection were specific to emotionality. For the ERP correlate of recollection, we found an interaction between stimulus type and day, suggesting that this measure decreased to a larger extend on Day 2 compared with Day 1. However, we did not find direct evidence for delayed forgetting of items encoded in emotional contexts at Day 2. Emotion at encoding might make retrieval of items with emotional context more readily accessible, but we found no significant evidence that emotional context either facilitated familiarity-based or recollection-based item-memory after a delay of 24 h.

虽然研究主要集中在对情感项目的识别，但情感可能是我们周围环境中更微妙的一部分，并且通过上下文而不是项目来传达。使用 ERP，我们研究了在编码过程中唤起上下文可能对项目上下文绑定以及随后的基于熟悉度和基于回忆的项目记忆产生的影响。有人提出，唤醒可以促进项目与上下文的结合，从而增强回忆对随后的记忆判断的贡献。或者，唤醒可以将注意力转移到场景的中心特征上，并通过这种方式在编码过程中促进统一。这可以提高熟悉度对记忆的贡献。参与者学习了与生态高度有效的情感面孔配对的中性物体，这些面孔的名字后来在立即和延迟测试阶段充当中性线索。当最初与情感背景面孔一起研究时，参与者可以更快地识别对象。具有中性和情感背景的项目引起早期额叶 ERP 旧/新差异（200-400 毫秒）。熟悉度和回忆的神经生理学相关性都不是特定于情绪的。对于回忆的 ERP 相关性，我们发现刺激类型和日期之间存在相互作用，这表明与第 1 天相比，第 2 天该测量值下降幅度更大。然而，我们没有发现延迟遗忘情绪编码项目的直接证据第 2 天的上下文。