An unpleasant emotional state reduces working memory capacity: electrophysiological evidence

Abstract

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.

Controlling Unpleasant Thoughts: Adjustments of Cognitive Control Based on Previous-Trial Load in a Working Memory Task

“…This finding corroborates with the extensive literature that indicates that our ability to perform goal-directed tasks can be disrupted by emotional responses to distractive affective stimuli (Vuilleumier and Schwartz, 2001;Erthal et al, 2005;Dolcos and McCarthy, 2006;Fernandes et al, 2013;Oliveira et al, 2013;Stout et al, 2013). Additionally, Figueira et al (2017) demonstrated that the emotional state effect on WM capacity is influenced by thought control ability traits (Luciano et al, 2005). Individuals who experienced more intrusive thoughts were more susceptible to the effect of the emotional state on WM capacity (Figueira et al, 2017).…”

“…Previously, we showed that a negative emotional state (induced by presenting distractive negative pictures) disrupts and reduces WM capacity, which was measured using the electrophysiological index denominated contralateral delay activity (CDA; Figueira et al, 2017). This finding corroborates with the extensive literature that indicates that our ability to perform goal-directed tasks can be disrupted by emotional responses to distractive affective stimuli (Vuilleumier and Schwartz, 2001;Erthal et al, 2005;Dolcos and McCarthy, 2006;Fernandes et al, 2013;Oliveira et al, 2013;Stout et al, 2013).…”

“…Additionally, Figueira et al (2017) demonstrated that the emotional state effect on WM capacity is influenced by thought control ability traits (Luciano et al, 2005). Individuals who experienced more intrusive thoughts were more susceptible to the effect of the emotional state on WM capacity (Figueira et al, 2017). Besides a high level of thought control ability being associated with higher cognitive control (Williams et al, 2010), low thought control ability is associated with measures of anxiety and also symptomatology for a number of psychological disorders (Luciano et al, 2005).…”

The cost of facing fear: Visual working memory is impaired for faces expressing fear

“…Emotional state has also been shown to impact the manner in which facial stimuli are processed, with negative emotional states reducing the degree to which faces are processed holistically (Curby, Johnson, & Tyson, ). Further, emotional state has also been shown to modulate memory recall and information processing style more generally, with evidence, across studies, that different mood states can both reduce (e.g., Figueira et al ., ) or enhance working memory performance depending on the valence of the mood state (e.g., Storbeck & Maswood, ). These previous studies suggest that positive and negative mood measures could be insightful for understanding the VWM cost we found for fearful faces.…”

Gender Differences in the Relationship of Sexual Functioning with Implicit and Explicit Sex Liking and Sex Wanting: A Community Sample Study

“…A pivotal role among these conditions is assigned to working memory capacity (WMC; Baddeley, 1992;Dehaene, 2014). Situational factors, such as fatigue, alcohol intoxication, unpleasant emotional state (Figueira et al, 2017), and anxiety (Moran, 2016), impede the functioning of working memory. Individual differences in WMC are found to be significantly related but not identical to both crystallized and fluid intelligence (for a meta-analysis, see Ackerman, Beier, & Boyle, 2005).…”