In making decisions, people have to balance between the competing demands of speed and accuracy, a balance generally referred to as the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT). In this study, we investigated the role of controlled SAT in a two-choice task in which manual responses were either validly or invalidly cued. Examining electrophysiological measurements of oscillatory brain activity, theta power in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), alpha power in the occipital cortex, and beta power in the motor cortex were found to be related to SAT. Because oscillatory effects of SAT were found to emanate from the SAT baseline interval preceding the two-choice task, the results indicate that SAT is modulated by a change of visuo-motor baseline activities rather than a change of response threshold. Moreover, in the two-choice task, conflict-induced theta power in the ACC was found to be more pronounced in speed than in accuracy trials, whereas priming-related beta power dynamics in the motor cortex were unaffected by SAT. These results indicate that conflict processing, but not response priming, depends on SAT.

A large body of research shows that emotionally significant stimuli are better stored in memory. One question that has received much less attention is how emotional memories are influenced by factors that influence memories after the initial encoding of stimuli. Intriguingly, several recent studies suggest that post-encoding factors do not differ in their effects on emotional and neutral memories. However, to date, only detrimental factors have been addressed. In the present study, we examined whether emotionally negative memories are differentially influenced by a well-known beneficial factor: the testing of memories. We employed a standard cued recall testing-effect paradigm where participants studied cue-target pairs for negative and neutral target pictures. In a subsequent post-encoding phase, one third of the cue-target pairs were tested and one third restudied; the remaining third served as control pairs. After one week, memory for all cue-target pairs was tested. While replicating both the testing effect and the emotional enhancement effect, no differences between negative and neutral memories in the benefits received from testing and restudying were observed. Thus, it seems to be true that post-encoding factors do not influence emotional memories in any other way than neutral memories, even when they are beneficial.