Event-based prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to remember to perform a delayed and intended action when an event is encountered in the future. Whether emotional targets promote PM performance is still controversial. The reason for these inconsistent findings may be related to the degree of target arousal and context valence (the valence of ongoing task trials) in the previous studies. This study aimed to investigate the separate and combined effects of target valence, arousal, and context valence on event-based PM through two experiments. The results showed that the participants were faster and more accurate in responding to positive, negative, and high-arousal PM targets. Interestingly, an interaction effect of target valence, arousal, and context valence was observed, implying that their individual effects on PM performance cannot be understood in isolation. These findings demonstrate that positive, negative, and high-arousal PM targets can enhance PM performance. In addition, the results provided support for both the emotion enhancement account and the emotion-saliency account, depending upon whether the valence of the PM target matched or did not match the valence of the context. Moreover, context valence can modulate the effect of arousal on PM across different target valences.

基于事件的前瞻性记忆（PM）是指在未来遇到事件时记住执行延迟的预期动作的能力。情感目标是否能促进 PM 绩效仍存在争议。造成这些不一致结果的原因可能与之前研究中的目标唤醒程度和情境效价（正在进行的任务试验的效价）有关。本研究旨在通过两个实验研究目标效价、唤醒度和情境效价对基于事件的 PM 的单独和组合影响。结果表明，参与者对积极、消极和高唤醒性 PM 目标的反应更快、更准确。有趣的是，我们观察到了目标效价、唤醒度和情境效价之间的相互作用，这意味着它们对 PM 绩效的个体影响不能孤立地理解。这些发现表明，积极、消极和高唤醒度的 PM 目标可以提高 PM 绩效。此外，结果还为情绪增强账户和情绪显着性账户提供了支持，具体取决于 PM 目标的效价是否与上下文的效价匹配。此外，上下文效价可以调节不同目标效价的唤醒对 PM 的影响。