The effect of pleasant emotional arousal following the learning on the memory consolidation

The present research aimed to study the effect of the pleasant emotional arousal on the memory consolidation. To achieve this goal, of the students of three different universities: Tehran university, Tarbiat Modares Universities and Tehran’s Azad University (south branch), 60 undergraduate students (30 men and 30 women),who were accessible, were selected, and then they were divided accidentally into two groups (experimental and control groups). They learned a list of words and participated in a word recall test immediately after learning. Then, members of the experimental group watched positive emotional excerpts and members of the control group watched a neutral excerpt of a film. In this study, the scores of the delayed free recall and recognition tests which were carried out 30 minutes after learning the list of words, were considered the dependent variable. Independent t-test was used to analyze the revealed data. Mean score in delayed free recall and recognition tests was significantly higher (p<0/01) in experimental group compared to control group. These findings showed that emotional arousal following the learning, would consolidate the memory and this consolidation is achieved regardless of emotional or neutral nature of the stimulus of the learned materials.