Anger impacts face memory and face – object memory differently in children and adults

Angry facial expressions are quickly detected and trigger emotional and physiological responses. They are especially salient in threatening contexts and can alter attention and emotion recognition, particularly in individuals exposed to trauma or violence. These effects extend to memory, individuals with prior violence exposure showing impaired associative memory for angry faces. However, little is known about how angry faces and their context are encoded and retained in typically developing children and adults. In this study, thirty-eight 9- to 11-year-old children (22 girls) and thirty 18- to 30-year-old adults (15 female participants) learned face - object pairs that contained either neutral or angry faces. Memory was tested for faces, objects, and face - object associations. Adults outperformed children in face and associative memory, but not in object memory. Children remembered angry faces better than neutral ones, whereas adults showed no such difference. Angry faces impaired adults' associative memory but had no effect on children's associative memory. In both children and adults, memory for objects per se was not different for objects that had been learned with an angry vs. a neutral face. These findings suggest that angry expressions influence memory differently across age groups and memory modalities. In addition, the reduction in adults' associative memory due to angry faces cannot be fully explained by attentional bias, as object memory remained unaffected. These findings have potential implications for clinical settings.