Intentional Versus Incidental Encoding of Emotional and Navigational Memory: Preliminary Data in Healthy Young Adults

Background/Objectives: 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 common process in everyday life whose sensitivity to emotional valence warrants further investigation. Methods: sixty-three college students (mean age = 25 years; 28 females) completed two versions of the same task, differing only in the instructions given: one directed attention to emotionally charged images encountered along a route through a city environment; the other directed attention to the route itself. Results: Mann–Whitney tests on uncontaminated first-session conditions and linear mixed models all indicated an advantage of intentional over incidental encoding for the spatial localization of emotional images. The advantage was valence-selective, present for negative and neutral stimuli but absent for positive ones. Signal detection analyses indicated that intentional instructions selectively increased sensitivity (d′). The response criterion also shifted, but in opposite directions for negative and neutral stimuli, so the sensitivity gain cannot be attributed to a uniform change in response bias. The effect was domain-specific: sensitivity for the spatial localization of emotional images increased, whereas sensitivity to navigational route did not improve. Conclusions: positive material thus appears to be encoded spontaneously, with potential implications for rehabilitation and clinical assessment.