Induced Negative Arousal Modulates the Speed of Visual Working Memory Consolidation

Abstract

This study examines how induced negative arousal influences the consolidation of fragile sensory inputs into durable working memory (WM) representations. Participants performed a visual WM change detection task with different amounts of encoding time manipulated by random pattern masks inserted at different levels of memory-and-mask Stimulus-Onset-Asynchrony (SOA). Prior to the WM task, negative or neutral emotion was induced using audio clips from the International Affective Digital Sounds (IADS). Pupillometry was simultaneously recorded to provide an objective measure of induced arousal. Self-report measures of early-life stress (i.e., adverse childhood experiences) and current mood states (i.e., depressed mood and anxious feeling) were also collected as covariates. We find that participants encode more items into WM at a longer memory-and-mask SOA under induced negative arousal, while their performance at a shorter memory-and-mask SOA or no mask conditions is highly comparable between negative and neutral conditions. These findings suggest that induced negative arousal can speed up WM consolidation. Furthermore, this emotional effect on WM consolidation speed is moderated by key affect-related individual differences. Participants who have greater pupil responses to negative IADS sounds or have more early-life stress show faster WM consolidation under induced negative arousal. Collectively, our findings reveal a critical role of phasic adrenergic responses in the rapid consolidation of visual WM content and the potential moderators of this association.

Negative Emotion Reduces Visual Working Memory Recall Variability: A Meta-analytical Review

“…On the other hand, negative emotion could also increase the efficiency of information processing (Eysenck et al, 2007;Xie, W., Sing, J. L. L., Martinez-Flores, A., & Zhang, 2021). As a result, memory items retained under the focus of attention in WM may be encoded with greater precision.…”

“…Second, the current study has revealed a potential moderator of the experimental effect of induced negative emotion on WM. Although the induction and assessment of emotional experiences have been extensively investigated in the past several decades (e.g., Bradley & Lang, 1994;Miers, Blöte, Sumter, Kallen, & Westenberg, 2011;Schubert, 2011;Siedlecka & Denson, 2019;Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2011), emotional experiences induced using laboratory stimuli and procedures can vary significantly due to individual differences in various factors such as emotion modulation and resilience (Chen et al, 2018;Quigley, Lindquist, & Barrett, 2014;Xie, W., Sing, J. L. L., Martinez-Flores, A., & Zhang, 2021;Xie, Cappiello, et al, 2018). Besides implementing more effective emotion induction procedures (Quigley et al, 2014), another essential step is to assess how the strength or intensity of induced emotional experiences across participants could modulate our experimental observations.…”

“…Nevertheless, considering that emotional experiences are multifaceted, future research should include multimodal assessments of induced emotional experiences, such as more objective measures of emotional experiences (e.g., pupil sizes, Xie, W., Sing, J. L. L., Martinez-Flores, A., & Zhang, 2021), to provide a better evaluation of the effects of induced emotion on cognition.…”

“…First, individual differences in the induced emotional experiences can be substantial and predictive of subsequent cognitive effects (Xie, W., Sing, J. L. L., Martinez-Flores, A., & Zhang, 2021). It is possible that differences in the strength of induced negative emotion experiences in different study cohorts could account for the heterogeneity in the recall variability effect.…”

Pupillary evidence reveals the influence of conceptual association on brightness perception

“…A linear interpolation was applied to the rest of the trials with blinks. Trials composed of more than 50% interpolated area within the analysis time window were then further excluded in the final analysis (33)(34)(35). In addition, we also excluded fast response time trials, where participants responded within 100 ms after probe onset (mean response time = 661 ms), and pupil analyses were only applied to the trials with correct response on the word valence evaluation task.…”