David Clewett (UCLA)

Presenter: David Clewett (UCLA)

Title: Emotion as the Grammar of Human Memory

Abstract:

Our lives unfold like continuous narratives, yet we remember the past as being more discrete and episodic, much like chapters in a book rather than a stream of unbroken text. Increasing evidence shows that contextual stability and change, such as working in your office and then walking into a classroom, help drive this transformation of continuous experience into distinct and memorable episodes. But one of the most powerful forces shaping cognition – emotional states – may also structure how experience is divided and remembered. In this talk, I will argue that fluctuations in emotion regulate a fundamental push-and-pull process that governs whether moments are linked together or separated in memory. First, I will present findings from a study combining custom musical pieces with a continuous affect-tracking tool, demonstrating that dynamic shifts in emotional valence scaffold the temporal organization of events in memory. I will then show that down-regulating negative emotion does not simply dampen its fragmenting or divisive effects. Instead, cognitive reappraisal elicits a different form of memory separation altogether, with emotion modulation reshaping rather than merely deconstructing the architecture of episodic memory. Together, these findings position emotion dynamics as a central organizing principle of human memory. By understanding how emotional fluctuations sculpt the structure of experience, we may better understand and ultimately intervene in affective disorders characterized by persistent negative emotion and fragmented, decontextualized memories.

This is a virtual talk from 3-4:30 and will be held on Zoom: https://uvic.zoom.us/j/5855919463?pwd=NlNSdE02RVlKQUVtRVUzL3lWM0xMdz09