Three experiments were conducted to determine whether an internal negative affective state might interact with human recall of verbal material. Threat of electrical shock accompanied both or neither presentation of words and a recall test, or one but not the other. The question was whether the internal context or affective state caused by the threat, during only learning or only recall, would induce state-dependent retention (poorer recall when the internal states accompanying learning and recall are different than when they are the same). The results indicated that a shift in affective state may induce state-dependent retention, but the conditions necessary for this effect remain unclear.
