Publication Date

3-20-2018

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Anatomy, Behavior, Cognitive psychology, Learning, Memory

Abstract

Volitional exploration and learning are key to adaptive behavior, yet their characterization remains a complex problem for cognitive science. Exploration has been posited as a mechanism by which motivation promotes memory, but this relationship is not well-understood, in part because novel stimuli that motivate exploration also reliably elicit changes in neuromodulatory brain systems that directly alter memory formation, via effects on neural plasticity. To deconfound interrelationships between motivation, exploration, and memory formation we manipulated motivational state prior to entering a spatial context, measured exploratory responses to the context and novel stimuli within it, and then examined motivation and exploration as predictors of memory outcomes. To elicit spontaneous exploration, we used the physical space of an art exhibit with affectively rich content; we expected motivated exploration and memory to reflect multiple factors, including not only motivational valence, but also individual differences. Motivation was manipulated via an introductory statement framing exhibit themes in terms of Promotion- or Prevention-oriented goals. Participants explored the exhibit while being tracked by video. They returned 24 hours later for recall and spatial memory tests, followed by measures of motivation, personality, and relevant attitude variables. Promotion and Prevention condition participants did not differ in terms of group-level exploration time or memory metrics, suggesting similar motivation to explore under both framing contexts. However, exploratory behavior and memory outcomes were significantly more closely related under Promotion than Prevention, indicating that Prevention framing disrupted expected depth-of-encoding effects. Additionally, while trait measures predicted exploration similarly across framing conditions, traits interacted with motivational framing context and facial affect to predict memory outcomes. This novel characterization of motivated learning implies that dissociable behavioral and biological mechanisms, here varying as a function of valence, contribute to memory outcomes in complex, real-life environments.

Copyright Date

3-20-2018

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the authors. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Chiew, K. S., Hashemi, J., Gans, L. K., Lerebours, L., Clement, N. J., Vu, M.-A. T., ..., & Adcock, R. A. (2018). Motivational valence alters memory formation without altering exploration of a real-life spatial environment. PloS One, 13(3), E0193506. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193506

Rights Holder

Kimberly S. Chiew, Jordan Hashemi, Lee K. Gans, Laura Lerebours, Nathaniel J. Clement, Mai-Anh T. Vu, Guillermo Sapiro, Nicole E. Heller, and R. Alison Adcock

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

31 pgs

File Size

5.6 MB

Publication Title

PLoS ONE

Volume

13

Issue

3

First Page

e0193506

ISSN

1932-6203

PubMed ID

29558526

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