Emotion influences processing and maintenance components of working memory

Overview & Synopsis

It was suggested that emotional stimuli may interfere with working memory processes. Our previous study (Plancher at al., 2018) showed deleterious influence of processing of negative emotional content on attentional maintenance in working memory of neutral information. Because the task was performed under articulatory suppression, we proposed that emotional stimuli direct more attentional resources towards the processing component of working memory, thereby reducing the storage capacity available for the to be remembered items. In the present study, our goals were to (1) replicate the influence of processing negative content on attentional maintenance of non-emotional information (Exp 1), and (2) examine whether maintenance of negative information as compared with emotionally neutral one’s disturbs processing of neutral content (Exp 2 in progress). The results from Experiment 1 confirm our suggestion that processing emotional information captures more attentional resources and thus reduces storage capacity in working memory.