(A) Item memory performance (proportion of hits–false alarms) in the recognition task across context valences. Recognition performance for items presented after negative contexts was significantly greater than for those presented after neutral (P = 0.009) and positive contexts (P = 0.019). (B) Item memory performance across context valences and the time lag between context and item images (short = 1 sec, medium = 4 sec, long = 6 sec). Long lags between context and item image presentations increased item recognition performance compared to short lags (P = 0.012). (C) Item memory performance across context valences and memory confidence. Items presented after negative contexts showed more high-confidence answers compared to neutral contexts (P = 0.004). (D) False alarm rate for foils perceptually similar to item images presented during encoding across context valences. There were no differences in the number of false alarms of items presented at retrieval that were perceptually similar to items presented during encoding. Error bars represent 1 SEM.
