E
Emotion affects:
• What is noticed in the first place. [1-5]
• Where attention lingers, thus allowing learning to take place. [1, 5, 6]
• Exactly what is remembered or forgotten. [3, 7-9]
• Where and how information is encoded in the brain. [3, 10-13]]
• Whether the learner strengthens memories by recalling and/or sharing them. [3,14]
Memories with emotional associations are recalled more vividly for much longer periods of time than those with neutral or no emotional connection. [3, 9, 15,
16]
Positive emotions prime the brain for high quality learning.
Emotions such as happiness, acceptance, and calmness lead learners to:
• Broaden perception to all details of the environment. [3, 9]
• Increase awareness of all types of available information. [1, 3, 9]
• Encode information in the areas of the brain best suited to
higher order thinking. [3,18]
• Process memories in ways that foster creativity and
connections. [1,3,19]
Negative emotions trigger survival instincts that may *encode, set firm memories vividly, but at an educational price. Emotions such as fear, anger, and *feeling unsafe lead learners to:
• Narrow perception to focus on the perceived threat. [3,8,9,17]
• Decrease awareness of non-threatening information in the environment. [3, 9, 17]
• Encode information in the primitive areas of the brain, best suited to fight or flight, and l
imit effectiveness of
higher cognitive functions. [3, 10, 13, 18]
• Focus memory and recall on matters of self-preservation and simple facts rather than on making sense out of how ideas are connected. [3, 11, 19]
1. Flom, R., et al., The effects of exposure to dynamic expressions of affect on 5-
month-olds’ memory. Infant Behavior and Development, 2014. 37(4): p. 752-759.
2. Hadley, C.B. and D.G. MacKay, Does emotion help or hinder immediate
memory? Arousal versus priority-binding mechanisms. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2006. 32(1): p. 79-88.
3. Levine, L.J. and R.S. Edelstein, Emotion and memory narrowing: A review and
goal-relevance approach. Cognition & Emotion, 2009. 23(5): p. 833-875.
4. MacKay, D.G. and M.V. Ahmetzanov, Emotion, Memory, and Attention in the
Taboo Stroop Paradigm: An Experimental Analogue of Flashbulb Memories.
Psychological Science, 2005. 16(1): p. 25-32.

5. Schettino, A., T. Loeys, and G. Pourtois, Multiple synergistic effects of emotion
and memory on proactive processes leading to scene recognition. NeuroImage, 2013.
81(0): p. 81-95.
6. Kensinger, E.A., R.J. Garoff-Eaton, and D.L. Schacter, Memory for specific visual
details can be enhanced by negative arousing content. Journal of Memory and
Language, 2006. 54(1): p. 99-112.
7. Kensinger, E.A., R.J. Garoff-Eaton, and D.L. Schacter, Effects of emotion on
memory specificity: Memory trade-offs elicited by negative visually arousing stimuli.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2007. 56(4): p. 575-591.
8. May, C., M. Owens, and G.O. Einstein, The impact of emotion on prospective
memory and monitoring: No pain, big gain. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2012.
19(6): p. 1165-71.
9. Yegiyan, N.S. and A.P. Yonelinas, Encoding details: Positive emotion leads to
memory broadening. Cognition & Emotion, 2011. 25(7): p. 1255-1262.
10. Cocenas-Silva, R., et al., Temporal memory of emotional experience. Memory &
Cognition, 2012. 40(2): p. 161-167.
11. Fivush, R.S., et al., Weathering the storm: Children's long-term recall of
Hurricane Andrew. Memory, 2004. 12(1): p. 104.
12. Dolan, M. and R. Fullam, Memory for emotional events in violent offenders with
antisocial personality disorder. Personality and Individual Differences, 2005. 38(7): p. 1657-1667.
13. Kensinger, E.A. and D.L. Schacter, Remembering the specific visual details of
presented objects: Neuroimaging evidence for effects of emotion. Neuropsychologia,
2007. 45(13): p. 2951-2962.
14. Breslin, C.W. and M.A. Safer, Effects of Event Valence on Long-Term Memory
for Two Baseball Championship Games. Psychological Science, 2011. 22(11): p. 1408-
1412.
15. Adelman, J.S. and Z. Estes, Emotion and memory: A recognition advantage for
positive and negative words independent of arousal. Cognition, 2013. 129(3): p. 530-
535.
16. Richards, J.M. and J.J. Gross, Personality and emotional memory: How
regulating emotion impairs memory for emotional events. Journal of Research in
Personality, 2006. 40(5): p. 631-651.
17. Peterson, C.N., Five years later: children's memory for medical emergencies.
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2001. 15(7): p. S7-S24.
18. Diaz, M.T., et al., The influence of emotional distraction on verbal working memory: An fMRI investigation comparing individuals with schizophrenia and healthy
adults. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 2011. 45(9): p. 1184-1193.
19. Baker-Ward, L.E., K.L. Eaton, and J.B. Banks, Young Soccer Players' Reports of
a Tournament Win or Loss: Different Emotions, Different Narratives. Journal of
Cognition & Development, 2005. 6(4): p. 507-527.
Additional Anecdotes: (Note: There is something weird about the formatting of these anecdotes, so I can’t show the 6.pt space between paragraphs that I would like to.)
Eduardo and the Puppet Theatre: English as a Second Language

Drama specialist, Lisa Bean, PhD
Eduardo was a little boy of six working with a reading recovery teacher who reported that he was simply not interacting with the materials she was trying to teach. She asked if I could help with some drama techniques. I found out what the target words were for her next session with him: woods (with an ‘s’), and shouted past tense emphasis).
I quickly made a little tabletop puppet theatre (a Kleenex box turned on its side with a woods sketched on the inside), and drew two boys on small pieces of paper, taping each figure to a drinking straw. trees.”
I met Eduardo and showed him the tiny stage: “Here are the woods, full of
I handed him one of the little paper boy puppets, and asked, “Who is this?”
He replied, “Miquel.”
I showed him my puppet, whom he quickly named “Michel.”
I began a story: “Once upon a time Miguel and Michel went for a walk in the woods. They got lost from each other. They each shouted to try and find one other.
‘Miguel! Where are you?’ shouted Michel.”
Eduardo understood the role play, and began moving his puppet around the small woods: “Michel! Where are you? Help!”
I added the commentary: “…shouted Michel as he ran through the woods.”
After a few moments, the reading recovery teacher showed Eduardo his writing tablet and asked him to reflect about what he had just done. Typically,
Eduardo would draw a picture and label it with just one word: “bird” or “plane” or
“dog.” This time, though, Eduardo made up a whole story:
Eduardo went for a walk in the woods. He got lost. A bear come and chase him up a tree. The bear screamed. Eduardo screamed. [Note: Eduardo has connected shouted with screamed and is using past tense correctly.]
Eduardo’s brother Miguel come and chase the bear away. They go home.
The reading recovery teacher was ecstatic. Eduardo had written his first story, complete with a beginning, middle and an end!
What had happened?
Eduardo felt emotionally safe in this small puppet world – a world which allowed him to role play spontaneously, yet be one step away from the intense language scrutiny under which he typically labored. The reading recovery teacher

began using tabletop puppet theatres for other students as well, and reported excellent engagement and language use improvements for both English and non-
English learners.
Safe Haven
Music specialist, Loretta Walker, PhD
I had the privilege of working with a team of teachers who had designed their curriculum to teach not only academic skills, but also skills that helped their students to create emotionally safe environments in their classrooms. These students and teachers were exceptionally supportive of one another.
These otherwise typical 4th and 5th graders and I sang, clapped, and patted our way through a math lesson about multiples that I had previously shared with hundreds of other students in other pleasant classrooms. During the lesson we created a chart on the whiteboard of all the numbers that are multiples of three up to about the number 99. Then we used music and movement once again to discover the multiples of 6 and 12, which we marked in different colors on the same chart to create visually interrelated patterns.
We then took time for the students to discuss the patterns they found in the numbers on the board and how those patterns related to what they knew about mathematical operations. This group discovered almost twice as many patterns as the nearly 300 students with whom I had worked before them.
What was the difference?
True. These students had long been encouraged to explore ideas from multiple perspectives before settling down to the kind of “right” answer that is typically expected on a test.
But why were their exploratory discussions so rich and their insights so deep?
I believe an important reason is that these teachers and students had deliberately and consistently worked together to create an exceptionally safe emotional environment where people were cherished and ideas had a safe place to blossom. They were free to focus their energies on exploring possibilities rather than defending against attack.
In neurological terms, they were free to fully access the cognitively advanced regions of their brains without fear of interference from the primitive fight or flight response.
In human terms, they had created a little piece of the kind of society that is the dream of much of humankind.