The influence of working memory on the anger superiority effect

Abstract

The anger superiority effect shows that an angry face is detected more efficiently than a happy face. However, it is still controversial whether attentional allocation to angry faces is a bottom-up process or not. We investigated whether the anger superiority effect is influenced by top-down control, especially working memory (WM). Participants remembered a color then searched for differently colored facial expressions. Just holding the color information in WM did not modulate the anger superiority effect. However, when increasing the probabilities of trials in which the color of a target face matched the color held in WM, participants were inclined to direct attention to the target face regardless of the facial expression. Moreover, the knowledge of high probability of valid trials eliminated the anger superiority effect. These results suggest that the anger superiority effect is modulated by top-down effects of WM, the probability of events and expectancy about these probabilities.Keywords: working memory, visual search, facial expressions, emotion, attention The Influence of Working Memory on the Anger Superiority EffectAnger is one of the inherent human emotions. Anger expression is already observed in infancy (Braungart-Rieker, Hill-Soderlund, & Karrass, 2010;Pemberton Roben et al., 2012), and the structure of anger is universal across cultures (Alonso-Arbiol et al., 2011). Because people express anger under interpersonal provocations or conflicts, rapid recognition of angry faces is important to restore relationships with others or to be motivated to avoid dangerous situations. Many previous studies have shown automatic attentional allocation to angry faces (Eastwood, Smilek, & Merikle, 2001;Fox et al., 2000;Frischen, Eastwood, & Smilek, 2008;Hansen & Hansen, 1988;Horstmann & Bauland, 2006;Öhman, Lundqvist, & Esteves, 2001;Pinkham, Griffin, Baron, Sasson, & Gur, 2010;Williams, Moss, Bradshaw, & Mattingley, 2005). In these studies visual search paradigms are used in which several facial expressions are presented and participants are required to determine whether all presented facial expressions are from the same category (e.g., angry) or not. Reaction times (RTs) to detect an angry target, which is surrounded by happy faces, are shorter than those for a happy target in a crowd of angry distractor faces (Horstmann & Bauland, 2006;Pinkham et al., 2010). This rapid detection of an angry face is called the anger superiority effect. Although some previous studies suggest that the anger superiority effect does not depend on the number of distractors (Öhman et al., 2001), it is still controversial whether attentional allocation to angry faces is a bottom-up and automatic attentional process or not (Frischen et al., 2008).In recent studies, top-down effects on emotional processing have been demonstrated, suggesting that the anger superiority effect is not a purely bottom-up and automatic process. (Mohanty & Sussman, 2013;Todd, Cunningham, Anderson, & Thompson, 2012). Previous studies have shown that angry ...

Visual mental imagery influences attentional guidance in a visual-search task

“…For example, attentional guidance toward VWM-matching information was observed, although this attentional shifting was not observed when the VWM-matching stimulus was always a distractor in a visual-search task (Woodman et al, 2013;Woodman & Luck, 2007). In addition, an increased probability that a target in a visual-search task matched the content of VWM-enhanced attentional guidance from VWM (Carlisle & Woodman, 2011;Kiyonaga, Egner, & Soto, 2012;Moriya, Koster, & De Raedt, 2014a). Future study should manipulate the probability of valid and invalid trials and investigate the effects of strategic control on attentional allocation.…”

Conscious Access to Suppressed Threatening Information Is Modulated by Working Memory

“…Recent research has demonstrated that the content of WM can prioritize relevant emotional information (Grecucci et al, 2010;Moriya et al, 2014), but whether the contents of WM could also exert an influence on emotional information that is not yet consciously processed remains unknown. In the current study, we employed emotional faces in a WM task in conjunction with the b-CFS method and found a robust modulation effect of WM on nonconscious emotion processing (Experiment 1).…”

“…For example, faces can be better remembered or maintained in WM when their expressions are angry or fearful rather than happy or neutral ( Jackson, Wu, Linden, & Raymond, 2009;Sessa, Luria, Gotler, Jolicoeur, & Dell'acqua, 2011). Although a plethora of research has demonstrated that emotional salience can exert a powerful modulatory effect on WM ( Jackson, Linden, & Raymond, 2014;Jackson et al, 2009;Sessa et al, 2011), only a few studies have investigated the effect of WM content on emotional processing (Grecucci, Soto, Rumiati, Humphreys, & Rotshtein, 2010;Moriya, Koster, & De Raedt, 2014). It has been found that emotional faces trigger much stronger responses in the fronto-thalamic occipital network when they match an emotional word held in WM than when they do not (Grecucci et al, 2010).…”

“…It has been found that emotional faces trigger much stronger responses in the fronto-thalamic occipital network when they match an emotional word held in WM than when they do not (Grecucci et al, 2010). WM contents can also modulate the anger-superiority effect in a visual search task (Moriya et al, 2014). These studies have indicated that the processing of emotional information is susceptible to WM modulations; however, it remains to be delineated whether such content-based WM effects can take place even when the emotional information is prevented from reaching visual awareness.…”

Negative and Positive Bias for Emotional Faces: Evidence from the Attention and Working Memory Paradigms

“…By using line-drawing objects, Alvarez and Cavanagh (2004) found a high correlation between the reciprocals of VWM capacity and visual search slope. For emotional faces, limited research has investigated attention and memory within the same study (Moriya et al, 2014). Future studies should examine the correlation between emotional bias in visual attention and emotional advantage in VWM.…”