Effects of facial expression on working memory

Abstract

In long-term memory (LTM) emotional content may both enhance and impair memory, however, disagreement remains whether emotional content exerts different effects on the ability to maintain and manipulate information over short intervals. Using a working-memory (WM) recognition task requiring the monitoring of faces displaying facial expressions of emotion, participants judged each face as identical (target) or not (non-target) to that presented 2 trials back (2-back). Negative expression was better and faster recognised, illustrated by higher target discriminability and target detection. Positive and negative expressions also induced a more liberal detection bias compared with neutral. Taking the preceding item into account, additional accuracy impairment (negative preceding negative target) and enhancement effects (negative or positive preceding neutral target) appeared. This illustrates a differential modulation of WM based on the affective tone of the target (mirroring LTM enhancement- and recognition bias effects), and of the preceding item (enhanced and impaired target detection).

Eye gaze influences working memory for happy but not angry faces

“…In WM, however, a threat benefit is found. Using a simple delayed discrimination task where participants were required to state whether a test face was present or not a second or so earlier, WM was significantly enhanced when the faces encoded into WM conveyed an angry versus happy or neutral expression (Jackson, Linden, & Raymond, 2014;Jackson, Wolf, Johnston, Raymond, & Linden, 2008;Jackson, Wu, Linden, & Raymond, 2009;Thomas, Jackson, & Raymond, 2014; see also Sessa, Luria, Gotler, Jolicoeur, &Dell'acqua, 2011, andStiernströmer, Wolgast, &Johansson, 2015). This angry benefit in WM is thought to reflect a survival response that triggers more detailed or elaborate encoding of threatening information in order to facilitate an appropriate, immediate response.…”

Remembering who was where: A happy expression advantage for face identity-location binding in working memory.

“…Faces at encoding conveyed emotion but this information was not task-relevant, participants simply had to remember identity. These studies have demonstrated not only enhanced WM for faces showing anger versus a neutral expression ( Jackson, Wu, Linden, & Raymond, 2009 ; see also Sessa, Luria, Gotler, Jolicœur, & Dell’Acqua, 2011 , for fearful vs. neutral faces advantage in WM), but also an advantage for faces conveying anger compared with happiness ( Jackson, Linden, & Raymond, 2014 ; Jackson, Wolf, Johnston, & Linden, 2008 ; Jackson et al, 2009 ; see also Becker, Mortensen, Anderson, & Sasaki, 2014 , and Stiernströmer, Wolgast, & Johansson, 2016 ). These findings indicate that threat cues boost the allocation of visual WM resources to process person information with greater accuracy, a response that may arise from a basic mechanism aimed at protecting our biological survival, as well as our social and emotional well-being.…”

Anxiety promotes memory for mood-congruent faces but does not alter loss aversion

“…Anxiety has been associated with working memory impairment, including anxiety induced by ToS 13 14 , individuals with high dispositional anxiety 13 15 , and clinical anxiety 16 17 . However, this has yet to be investigated using emotional stimuli, which are highly salient, and for which working memory is therefore likely to be enhanced regardless of anxiety 18 . People with high trait anxiety exhibit an enhanced response to negative stimuli, such as fearful faces, in attentional tasks 2 19 20 21 , consistent with a mood-congruent bias in the allocation of attentional resources.…”