Mara Mather
Biographic Data
| ID | 1856506 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mara Mather |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mara |
| FAMILY NAME | Mather |
| SIGNATURE | MATHER M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4331-6112 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 29 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
About time? The role of time perspective in the priority for positive over negative emotion in attention
Compared to younger adults, older adults seem to prioritize processing positive information and deprioritize processing negative information. Known as the positivity effect, its mechanisms remain debated. One explanation of the positivity effect is that older adults are influenced by a sense of limited time left in life to focus more on emotional well-being compared with younger adults. Previous research shows that experimentally manipulating tim…
Age differences in rapid attention to emotional stimuli are driven more by valence than by discrete emotions
In a pattern known as the positivity effect , older adults tend to prioritize positive over negative information in attention and memory compared to younger adults. Traditional theories attribute this effect to age-related shifts toward positive emotions, and it is typically operationalized as a two-by-two interaction between age (younger vs. older) and valence (negative vs. positive). Alternative accounts, however, suggest that discrete emotions…
Effects of acute exercise on emotional memory
Research has demonstrated beneficial effects of acute exercise on memory for neutral materials, such as word lists of neutral valence/low arousal. However, the impacts of exercise on emotional memory is less understood. Across three laboratory experiments in college students, we tested if acute exercise could enhance both neutral and emotional memory performance, anticipating a greater effect for emotional memory. We examined effects of exercise …
Age differences in emotion-induced blindness
Compared with younger adults, older adults tend to favor positive information more than negative information in their attention and memory. This "positivity effect" has been observed in various paradigms, but at which stage it impacts cognitive processing and how it influences processing other stimuli appearing around the same time remains unclear. Across 4 experiments, we examined how older adults prioritize emotional information in early attent…
Effects of hunger on emotional arousal responses and attention/memory biases
In this study, we examined how emotional arousal interacts with hunger states and the processing of food stimuli. In general, arousal enhances the processing of high-priority information at the expense of lower priority information (Mather & Sutherland, 2011). Because food has been a biologically relevant stimulus in primates throughout evolution, detecting it in the environment and remembering its location has high priority. In our study, induci…
Rostral locus coeruleus integrity is associated with better memory performance in older adults
Age differences in selective memory of goal-relevant stimuli under threat
When faced with threat, people often selectively focus on and remember the most pertinent information while simultaneously ignoring any irrelevant information. Filtering distractors under arousal requires inhibitory mechanisms, which take time to recruit and often decline in older age. Despite the adaptive nature of this ability, relatively little research has examined how both threat and time spent preparing these inhibitory mechanisms affect se…
Arousal increases neural gain via the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system in younger adults but not in older adults
Perceptual salience does not influence emotional arousal’s impairing effects on top-down attention
Emotional arousal impairs top-down attentional control while strengthening bottom-up attentional biases. In this study, we examined whether top-down impairments due to arousal can be modulated by increasing the perceptual salience of the target stimulus. To examine this question, we briefly displayed positive and negative arousing images prior to the encoding of 2 emotionally neutral items, 1 of which was to be remembered and 1 of which was perce…
Optimism for the Future in Younger and Older Adults
Contrary to previous research, younger and older adults had comparable future forecasts when projecting to the exact same age. These findings emphasize the need to consider age and stage of life when examining age differences in future optimism
Age Differences in Emotion Regulation Choice
Older men demonstrated greater engagement with highly positive emotional contexts than did younger men. Thus, age differences in emotion regulation goals when faced with intense emotional stimuli depend on the valence of the emotional stimuli
How Stereotype Threat Affects Healthy Older Adults’ Performance on Clinical Assessments of Cognitive Decline
Objectives. Stereotype threat can impair older adults' performance on clinical assessments for cognitive decline. We examined why this occurs. Based upon the regulatory focus account of stereotype threat, we predicted that the effects of stereotype threat should depend upon the assessments' reward structure. Stereotype threat should be associated with poor performance when the assessment emphasizes gaining correct answers, but not when it emphasi…
Hearing something emotional influences memory for what was just seen
Enhanced memory for emotional items often comes at the cost of memory for the background scenes. Because emotional foreground items both induce arousal and attract attention, it is not clear whether the emotion effects are simply the result of shifts in visual attention during encoding or whether arousal has effects beyond simple attention capture. In the current study, participants viewed a series of scenes that each either had a foreground obje…
How arousal modulates the visual contrast sensitivity function
Recent evidence indicates that emotion enhances contrast thresholds in subsequent visual perception (Phelps, Ling, & Carrasco, 2006) and perceptual sensitivity for low-spatial frequency but not high-spatial frequency targets (Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2009b). However, these studies just report responses to various frequencies at a fixed contrast level or responses to various contrasts at a fixed frequency. In the current study, we measured the full…
Association learning for emotional harbinger cues
Neutral cues that predict emotional events (emotional harbingers) acquire emotional properties and attract attention. Given the importance of emotional harbingers for future survival, it is desirable to flexibly learn new facts about emotional harbingers when needed. However, recent research revealed that it is harder to learn new associations for emotional harbingers than cues that predict non-emotional events (neutral harbingers). In the curren…
Negative arousal amplifies the effects of saliency in short-term memory
Evidence from 2 experiments suggests that negative arousal increases biases in attention that result from differences in visual salience. Participants were exposed to negative arousing or neutral sounds before briefly viewing an array of letters. They reported as many of the letters as they could, and attention was biased to certain letters by increasing salience through visual contrast. Regardless of the type of sound heard, participants were mo…
Attenuating age-related learning deficits
Previous research reveals that older adults sometimes show enhanced processing of emotionally positive stimuli relative to negative stimuli, but that this positivity bias reverses to become a negativity bias when cognitive control resources are less available. In this study, we test the hypothesis that emotionally positive feedback will attenuate well-established age-related deficits in rule learning while emotionally negative feedback would ampl…
Both Younger and Older Adults Have Difficulty Updating Emotional Memories
Despite the fact that older adults showed overall decline in associative memory, the impairing effect of emotion on updating associative memory was similar between younger and older adults
Arousal-Biased Competition in Perception and Memory
Our everyday surroundings besiege us with information. The battle is for a share of our limited attention and memory, with the brain selecting the winners and discarding the losers. Previous research shows that both bottom–up and top–down factors bias competition in favor of high priority stimuli. We propose that arousal during an event increases this bias both in perception and in long-term memory of the event. Arousal-biased competition theory …
Differential interference effects of negative emotional states on subsequent semantic and perceptual processing
Past studies have revealed that encountering negative events interferes with cognitive processing of subsequent stimuli. The present study investigates whether negative events affect semantic and perceptual processing differently. Presentation of negative pictures produced slower reaction times than neutral or positive pictures in tasks that require semantic processing, such as natural or man-made judgments about drawings of objects, commonness j…
Reconciling findings of emotion-induced memory enhancement and impairment of preceding items
A large body of work has revealed that people remember emotionally arousing information better than neutral information. However, previous research has revealed contradictory effects of emotional events on memory for neutral events that precede or follow them: In some studies, emotionally arousing items have impaired memory for immediately preceding or following items, and in others arousing items enhanced memory for preceding items. By demonstra…
The emotional harbinger effect
A key function of memory is to use past experience to predict when something important might happen next. Indeed, cues that previously predicted arousing events (emotional harbingers) garner more attention than other cues. However, the current series of five experiments demonstrates that people have poorer memory for the context of emotional harbinger cues than of neutral harbinger cues. Participants first learned that some harbinger cues (neutra…
Emotional Arousal and Memory Binding
Binding various features of an event together and maintaining these connections in memory is an essential component of episodic memories. Previous theories make contradictory predictions about the effects of emotional arousal on memory binding. In this article, I review evidence for both arousal-impaired and arousal-enhanced memory binding and explain these contradictory findings using an object-based framework. According to this framework, emoti…
Aging and goal-directed emotional attention
Previous findings reveal that older adults favor positive over negative stimuli in both memory and attention (for a review, see Mather & Carstensen, 2005). This study used eye tracking to investigate the role of cognitive control in older adults' selective visual attention. Younger and older adults viewed emotional-neutral and emotional-emotional pairs of faces and pictures while their gaze patterns were recorded under full or divided attention c…
Angry Faces Get Noticed Quickly
Previous studies have found that younger adults detect threatening stimuli more quickly than other types of stimuli. This study examined whether older adults also show this adaptive threat-detection advantage. On each trial in the experiment, participants saw an array consisting of nine schematic faces. Eight of the faces were neutral; the ninth was neutral, angry, happy, or sad. Participants indicated whether there was a discrepant face in each …
Angry Faces Get Noticed Quickly
Previous studies have found that younger adults detect threatening stimuli more quickly than other types of stimuli. This study examined whether older adults also show this adaptive threat-detection advantage. On each trial in the experiment, participants saw an array consisting of nine schematic faces. Eight of the faces were neutral; the ninth was neutral, angry, happy, or sad. Participants indicated whether there was a discrepant face in each …
Optimism for the Future in Younger and Older Adults
Contrary to previous research, younger and older adults had comparable future forecasts when projecting to the exact same age. These findings emphasize the need to consider age and stage of life when examining age differences in future optimism
How Stereotype Threat Affects Healthy Older Adults’ Performance on Clinical Assessments of Cognitive Decline
Objectives. Stereotype threat can impair older adults' performance on clinical assessments for cognitive decline. We examined why this occurs. Based upon the regulatory focus account of stereotype threat, we predicted that the effects of stereotype threat should depend upon the assessments' reward structure. Stereotype threat should be associated with poor performance when the assessment emphasizes gaining correct answers, but not when it emphasi…
Age Differences in Emotion Regulation Choice
Older men demonstrated greater engagement with highly positive emotional contexts than did younger men. Thus, age differences in emotion regulation goals when faced with intense emotional stimuli depend on the valence of the emotional stimuli
Rostral locus coeruleus integrity is associated with better memory performance in older adults
Arousal increases neural gain via the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system in younger adults but not in older adults
Aging and emotional memory
Two studies examined age differences in recall and recognition memory for positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. In Study 1, younger, middle-aged, and older adults were shown images on a computer screen and, after a distraction task, were asked first to recall as many as they could and then to identify previously shown images from a set of old and new ones. The relative number of negative images compared with positive and neutral images recalle…
Aging and Attentional Biases for Emotional Faces
We examined age differences in attention to and memory for faces expressing sadness, anger, and happiness. Participants saw a pair of faces, one emotional and one neutral, and then a dot probe that appeared in the location of one of the faces. In two experiments, older adults responded faster to the dot if it was presented on the same side as a neutral face than if it was presented on the same side as a negative face. Younger adults did not exhib…
The Role of Motivation in the Age-Related Positivity Effect in Autobiographical Memory
This study reveals that older adults have a positivity effect in long-term autobiographical memory and that a positivity bias can be induced in younger adults by a heightened motivation to regulate current emotional well-being. Three hundred nuns, ages 47 to 102 years, recalled personal information originally reported 14 years earlier. They did so under experimental conditions that repeatedly primed them to focus on their current emotional states…
Aging and motivated cognition
Angry Faces Get Noticed Quickly
Previous studies have found that younger adults detect threatening stimuli more quickly than other types of stimuli. This study examined whether older adults also show this adaptive threat-detection advantage. On each trial in the experiment, participants saw an array consisting of nine schematic faces. Eight of the faces were neutral; the ninth was neutral, angry, happy, or sad. Participants indicated whether there was a discrepant face in each …
Emotional Arousal and Memory Binding
Binding various features of an event together and maintaining these connections in memory is an essential component of episodic memories. Previous theories make contradictory predictions about the effects of emotional arousal on memory binding. In this article, I review evidence for both arousal-impaired and arousal-enhanced memory binding and explain these contradictory findings using an object-based framework. According to this framework, emoti…
Aging and goal-directed emotional attention
Previous findings reveal that older adults favor positive over negative stimuli in both memory and attention (for a review, see Mather & Carstensen, 2005). This study used eye tracking to investigate the role of cognitive control in older adults' selective visual attention. Younger and older adults viewed emotional-neutral and emotional-emotional pairs of faces and pictures while their gaze patterns were recorded under full or divided attention c…
The emotional harbinger effect
A key function of memory is to use past experience to predict when something important might happen next. Indeed, cues that previously predicted arousing events (emotional harbingers) garner more attention than other cues. However, the current series of five experiments demonstrates that people have poorer memory for the context of emotional harbinger cues than of neutral harbinger cues. Participants first learned that some harbinger cues (neutra…
Reconciling findings of emotion-induced memory enhancement and impairment of preceding items
A large body of work has revealed that people remember emotionally arousing information better than neutral information. However, previous research has revealed contradictory effects of emotional events on memory for neutral events that precede or follow them: In some studies, emotionally arousing items have impaired memory for immediately preceding or following items, and in others arousing items enhanced memory for preceding items. By demonstra…
Arousal-Biased Competition in Perception and Memory
Our everyday surroundings besiege us with information. The battle is for a share of our limited attention and memory, with the brain selecting the winners and discarding the losers. Previous research shows that both bottom–up and top–down factors bias competition in favor of high priority stimuli. We propose that arousal during an event increases this bias both in perception and in long-term memory of the event. Arousal-biased competition theory …
Differential interference effects of negative emotional states on subsequent semantic and perceptual processing
Past studies have revealed that encountering negative events interferes with cognitive processing of subsequent stimuli. The present study investigates whether negative events affect semantic and perceptual processing differently. Presentation of negative pictures produced slower reaction times than neutral or positive pictures in tasks that require semantic processing, such as natural or man-made judgments about drawings of objects, commonness j…
Negative arousal amplifies the effects of saliency in short-term memory
Evidence from 2 experiments suggests that negative arousal increases biases in attention that result from differences in visual salience. Participants were exposed to negative arousing or neutral sounds before briefly viewing an array of letters. They reported as many of the letters as they could, and attention was biased to certain letters by increasing salience through visual contrast. Regardless of the type of sound heard, participants were mo…
Attenuating age-related learning deficits
Previous research reveals that older adults sometimes show enhanced processing of emotionally positive stimuli relative to negative stimuli, but that this positivity bias reverses to become a negativity bias when cognitive control resources are less available. In this study, we test the hypothesis that emotionally positive feedback will attenuate well-established age-related deficits in rule learning while emotionally negative feedback would ampl…
Both Younger and Older Adults Have Difficulty Updating Emotional Memories
Despite the fact that older adults showed overall decline in associative memory, the impairing effect of emotion on updating associative memory was similar between younger and older adults
Association learning for emotional harbinger cues
Neutral cues that predict emotional events (emotional harbingers) acquire emotional properties and attract attention. Given the importance of emotional harbingers for future survival, it is desirable to flexibly learn new facts about emotional harbingers when needed. However, recent research revealed that it is harder to learn new associations for emotional harbingers than cues that predict non-emotional events (neutral harbingers). In the curren…
Hearing something emotional influences memory for what was just seen
Enhanced memory for emotional items often comes at the cost of memory for the background scenes. Because emotional foreground items both induce arousal and attract attention, it is not clear whether the emotion effects are simply the result of shifts in visual attention during encoding or whether arousal has effects beyond simple attention capture. In the current study, participants viewed a series of scenes that each either had a foreground obje…
How arousal modulates the visual contrast sensitivity function
Recent evidence indicates that emotion enhances contrast thresholds in subsequent visual perception (Phelps, Ling, & Carrasco, 2006) and perceptual sensitivity for low-spatial frequency but not high-spatial frequency targets (Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2009b). However, these studies just report responses to various frequencies at a fixed contrast level or responses to various contrasts at a fixed frequency. In the current study, we measured the full…
How Stereotype Threat Affects Healthy Older Adults’ Performance on Clinical Assessments of Cognitive Decline
Objectives. Stereotype threat can impair older adults' performance on clinical assessments for cognitive decline. We examined why this occurs. Based upon the regulatory focus account of stereotype threat, we predicted that the effects of stereotype threat should depend upon the assessments' reward structure. Stereotype threat should be associated with poor performance when the assessment emphasizes gaining correct answers, but not when it emphasi…
Age Differences in Emotion Regulation Choice
Older men demonstrated greater engagement with highly positive emotional contexts than did younger men. Thus, age differences in emotion regulation goals when faced with intense emotional stimuli depend on the valence of the emotional stimuli
Perceptual salience does not influence emotional arousal’s impairing effects on top-down attention
Emotional arousal impairs top-down attentional control while strengthening bottom-up attentional biases. In this study, we examined whether top-down impairments due to arousal can be modulated by increasing the perceptual salience of the target stimulus. To examine this question, we briefly displayed positive and negative arousing images prior to the encoding of 2 emotionally neutral items, 1 of which was to be remembered and 1 of which was perce…
Optimism for the Future in Younger and Older Adults
Contrary to previous research, younger and older adults had comparable future forecasts when projecting to the exact same age. These findings emphasize the need to consider age and stage of life when examining age differences in future optimism
Age differences in selective memory of goal-relevant stimuli under threat
When faced with threat, people often selectively focus on and remember the most pertinent information while simultaneously ignoring any irrelevant information. Filtering distractors under arousal requires inhibitory mechanisms, which take time to recruit and often decline in older age. Despite the adaptive nature of this ability, relatively little research has examined how both threat and time spent preparing these inhibitory mechanisms affect se…
Arousal increases neural gain via the locus coeruleus-noradrenaline system in younger adults but not in older adults
Age differences in emotion-induced blindness
Compared with younger adults, older adults tend to favor positive information more than negative information in their attention and memory. This "positivity effect" has been observed in various paradigms, but at which stage it impacts cognitive processing and how it influences processing other stimuli appearing around the same time remains unclear. Across 4 experiments, we examined how older adults prioritize emotional information in early attent…
Effects of hunger on emotional arousal responses and attention/memory biases
In this study, we examined how emotional arousal interacts with hunger states and the processing of food stimuli. In general, arousal enhances the processing of high-priority information at the expense of lower priority information (Mather & Sutherland, 2011). Because food has been a biologically relevant stimulus in primates throughout evolution, detecting it in the environment and remembering its location has high priority. In our study, induci…
Psychology (28 works) · Cognitive psychology (24 works) · Developmental psychology (19 works) · Cognition (15 works) · Aging and Gerontology Research (14 works) · Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies (12 works) · Neuroscience (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Memory Processes and Influences (10 works) · Arousal (9 works)