The impact of threat of shock on memory for threat-irrelevant information: Evidence for a role of reduced semantic organization.

Research into the effects of acute anxiety on episodic memory has produced inconsistent findings, particularly for threat-neutral information. In two experiments, we tested the hypothesis that anxiety induced by threat of shock can interfere with the use of semantic-organizational processes that benefit memory. In Experiment 1, participants viewed and freely recalled two lists of semantically unrelated neutral words, one encoded in a threatening context (threat blocks) and one encoded without threat (safe blocks).

Strengthening spatial reasoning: elucidating the attentional and neural mechanisms associated with mental rotation skill development.

Spatial reasoning is a critical skill in many everyday tasks and in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. The current study examined how training on mental rotation (a spatial reasoning task) impacts the completeness of an encoded representation and the ability to rotate the representation. We used a multisession, multimethod design with an active control group to determine how mental rotation ability impacts performance for a trained stimulus category and an untrained stimulus category.