Social learning of emotion and its implication for memory: An ERP Study

Social learning of emotional salience from surrounding social cues is especially advantageous under conditions of uncertainty. Yet, the neural mechanisms underlying this process and its consolidation into long-term memory remain poorly understood. In this two-day EEG study, we examined whether emotional salience from social cues (facial expressions) transfers to perceptually uncertain target images, and whether such learned salience is preserved in memory even after the social cues are removed. On Day 1 (learning session), we found no evidence for automatic emotional salience transfer across trials. Instead, ERP results indicated that social cue use was modulated by participants metacognitive state of subjective uncertainty, as reflected in the P1 amplitudes. On Day 2 (test session), recognition memory revealed evidence of additive emotional salience: EPN amplitudes were enhanced for accurately classified positive target images previously paired with social cues. In contrast, LPC amplitudes were reduced for negative target images in the social condition, regardless of classification accuracy. Together, these findings suggest that the influence of social cues is contingent on subjective uncertainty. Social cues enhanced emotional salience when internal valence judgments were strong (as for positive images), but led to increased reliance on the cue--and therefore dampened memory encoding--when internal valence judgments were weaker (as for negative images).