A happy place: emotional valence in incidental episodic and navigational memory

Episodic memory refers to the ability to place events within a specific spatial and temporal context, making its association with navigation unsurprising. Incidental episodic memory involves encoding and retrieving information without explicit instruction, a process that occurs frequently in everyday life. The influence of emotional valence and arousal on incidental memory could benefit from further investigation. To better understand these mechanisms, navigational and episodic memory were assessed using two versions of the same task that differed only in the instructions provided. One version assessed incidental episodic memory for emotionally charged visual stimuli, whereas the other assessed incidental navigational memory along a route through a city environment. Preliminary analyses conducted on college students (n = 64; mean age = 25 years; 29 females) are consistent with previous literature. Group differences were analyzed using the Mann–Whitney U test. Hit rates for negative stimuli differed significantly between task versions (U = 307, p = .003, r = .37), whereas positive stimuli showed no significant differences (U = 451, p = .281, r = .08). Positive stimuli appeared less sensitive to task instructions, suggesting a more stable incidental encoding of positive material, with potential implications for rehabilitation and clinical assessment.