Working memory load reduces facilitated processing of threatening faces: An ERP study.

Dillen, Lotte F. van; Derks, Belle

doi:10.1037/a0028624

Cited by 75 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(91 reference statements)

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“…Furthermore, cognitive processes—such as working memory load or implicit emotion regulation—may have contributed to the absence of enhanced LPP to socially relevant angry faces. For instance, recent studies observed reduced LPP amplitudes to aversive stimuli under working memory load, suggesting that threat processing is contingent on available cognitive resources (MacNamara et al, 2011; Van Dillen and Derks, 2012). Alternatively, implicit emotion regulation may have reduced LPP amplitudes to aversive stimuli as shown in previous studies (Hajcak et al, 2010; Thiruchselvam et al, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social and emotional relevance in face processing: happy faces of future interaction partners enhance the late positive potential

Bublatzky

Gerdes

White

et al. 2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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Human face perception is modulated by both emotional valence and social relevance, but their interaction has rarely been examined. Event-related brain potentials (ERP) to happy, neutral, and angry facial expressions with different degrees of social relevance were recorded. To implement a social anticipation task, relevance was manipulated by presenting faces of two specific actors as future interaction partners (socially relevant), whereas two other face actors remained non-relevant. In a further control task all stimuli were presented without specific relevance instructions (passive viewing). Face stimuli of four actors (2 women, from the KDEF) were randomly presented for 1s to 26 participants (16 female). Results showed an augmented N170, early posterior negativity (EPN), and late positive potential (LPP) for emotional in contrast to neutral facial expressions. Of particular interest, face processing varied as a function of experimental tasks. Whereas task effects were observed for P1 and EPN regardless of instructed relevance, LPP amplitudes were modulated by emotional facial expression and relevance manipulation. The LPP was specifically enhanced for happy facial expressions of the anticipated future interaction partners. This underscores that social relevance can impact face processing already at an early stage of visual processing. These findings are discussed within the framework of motivated attention and face processing theories.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social and emotional relevance in face processing: happy faces of future interaction partners enhance the late positive potential

Bublatzky

Gerdes

White

et al. 2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…Emotional stimuli can influence cognition through beneficial or detrimental effects (e.g. enhanced processing of goal-relevant emotional stimuli or increased distraction due to goal-irrelevant emotional stimuli) (Dolcos and McCarthy, 2006; MacNamara et al , 2011; van Dillen and Derks, 2012; Luo et al , 2014; Uher et al , 2014). Previous studies that applied various cognitive tasks have suggested that the processing of task-relevant stimuli is impaired when emotional distracters are presented before (Pereira et al , 2006, 2010) or during the task (Vuilleumier and Schwartz, 2001; Erthal et al , 2005; Fernandes et al , 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An unpleasant emotional state reduces working memory capacity: electrophysiological evidence

Figueira

Oliveira

Pereira

et al. 2017

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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Emotional states can guide the actions and decisions we make in our everyday life through their influence on cognitive processes such as working memory (WM). We investigated the long-lasting interference that an unpleasant emotional state had on goal-relevant WM representations from an electrophysiological perspective. Participants performed a change detection task that was preceded by the presentation of unpleasant or neutral task-irrelevant pictures in a blocked fashion. We focused on the contralateral delay activity (CDA), an event-related potential that is sensitive to the number of task-relevant items stored in WM. We found that the asymptotic limit for the CDA amplitude was lower during the unpleasant emotional state than during the neutral one; that is, an emotional state was capable of reducing how many task-relevant items the participants could hold in WM. Furthermore, both the individuals who experienced more intrusive thoughts and those who were dispositionally anxious were more susceptible to the influence of the emotional state. We provide evidence that an unpleasant emotional state diminished visual WM for task-relevant items, particularly in susceptible individuals. These results open new avenues to uncover the emotional-cognitive processing that underlies maladaptive WM representations and the role of such processing in the development of mental illness.

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“…As a consequence, interference should be reduced as task demands increase. There is support for this, i.e., that emotional interference effects are affected by cognitive load due to competition for attentional resources For example, research has shown that task-irrelevant emotional expressions interfere with performance on gender naming tasks during low but not high working memory load [3], [23]. These findings are supported by neuroimaging data showing decreased activity in emotion processing centres under conditions of increased load [10], [14], [24]–[26], although note that in the study by Erk et al [25], emotional distracters had no behavioural effect on task performance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These include presenting emotional stimuli as background images (e.g., [19], [31]) or flanking stimuli (e.g., [18]) in an emotional n-back paradigm, or including emotionally expressive faces in a gender naming task [3], [23]. However, as the emotional aspect of these stimuli remains available for conscious processing and evaluation, responses may be influenced by metacognition, i.e., the ability to reflect on and regulate one's cognitive activity [32], [33].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increasing Cognitive Load Reduces Interference from Masked Appetitive and Aversive but Not Neutral Stimuli

et al. 2014

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Interactions between cognition and emotion are important for survival, often occurring in the absence of awareness. These interactions have been proposed to involve competition between cognition and emotion for attentional resources. Emotional stimuli have been reported to impair performance on cognitive tasks of low, but not high, load if stimuli are consciously perceived. This study explored whether this load-dependent interference effect occurred in response to subliminal emotional stimuli. Masked emotional (appetitive and aversive), but not neutral, stimuli interfered with performance accuracy but not response time on a cognitive task (n-back) at low (1-back), but not high (2-back) load. These results show that a load-dependent interference effect applies to masked emotional stimuli and that the effect generalises across stimulus categories with high motivational value. This supports models of selective attention that propose that cognition and emotion compete for attentional resources. More specifically, interference from masked emotional stimuli at low load suggests that attention is biased towards salient stimuli, while dissipation of interference under high load involves top-down regulation of attention. Our data also indicate that top-down goal-directed regulation of attention occurs in the absence of awareness and does not require metacognitive monitoring or evaluation of bias over behaviour, i.e., some degree of self-regulation occurs at a non-conscious level.

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Working memory load reduces facilitated processing of threatening faces: An ERP study.

Cited by 75 publications

References 62 publications

Social and emotional relevance in face processing: happy faces of future interaction partners enhance the late positive potential

Social and emotional relevance in face processing: happy faces of future interaction partners enhance the late positive potential

An unpleasant emotional state reduces working memory capacity: electrophysiological evidence

Increasing Cognitive Load Reduces Interference from Masked Appetitive and Aversive but Not Neutral Stimuli

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