Background

Emotional memory is an important type of memory that is triggered by positive and negative emotions. It is characterized by an enhanced memory for emotional stimuli which is usually coupled with a decrease in memory of neutral preceding events. Emotional memory is strongly associated with amygdala function and therefore could be disrupted in neuropsychiatric disorders. To our knowledge, there is no translated and culturally adapted instrument for the Brazilian Portuguese speaking population to assess emotional memory.

Objective

To report the translation and cross-cultural adaptation of a Brazilian Portuguese version of the Emotional Memory Scale, originally published by Strange et al. in 2003.

Methods

The author of the original scale provided 36 lists with 16 words each. Translation was performed by three independent bilingual translators. Healthy subjects assessed how semantically related each word was within the list (0 to 10) and what the emotional valence of each word was (-6 to +6). Lists without negative words were excluded (negative selection), most positive and most unrelated words were excluded (positive and semantic selection, respectively), and lists with low semantic relationship were excluded (semantic assessment).

Results

Five lists were excluded during negative selection, four words from each list were excluded in positive and semantic selection, and 11 lists were excluded during semantic assessment. Finally, we reached 20 lists of semantically related words; each list had one negative word and 11 neutral words.

Conclusion

A scale is now available to evaluate emotional memory in the Brazilian population and requires further validation on its psychometrics properties.

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