The emotional startle effect is disrupted by a concurrent working memory task.

Psychophysiology
Rosemary King, Alexandre Schaefer

Abstract

Working memory (WM) processes are often thought to play an important role in the cognitive regulation of negative emotions. However, little is known about how they influence emotional processing. We report two experiments that tested whether a concurrent working memory task could modulate the emotional startle eyeblink effect, a well-known index of emotional processing. In both experiments, emotionally negative and neutral pictures were viewed in two conditions: a "cognitive load" (CL) condition, in which participants had to actively maintain information in working memory (WM) while viewing the pictures, and a control "no load" (NL) condition. Picture-viewing instructions were identical across CL and NL. In both experiments, results showed a significant reduction of the emotional modulation of the startle eyeblink reflex in the CL condition compared to the NL condition. These findings suggest that a concurrent WM task disrupts emotional processing even when participants are directing visual focus on emotionally relevant information.

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Citations

May 27, 2011·Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience·Sarah WalkerAlexandre Schaefer
Aug 3, 2014·Acta Psychologica·Richard J AllenThomas Falcon
Oct 27, 2015·NeuroImage·Faisal MushtaqAlexandre Schaefer
Apr 3, 2012·Biological Psychology·Nick Berggren, Nazanin Derakshan
Dec 15, 2012·Behavioural Brain Research·Daniela SchoofsOliver T Wolf
Jul 20, 2016·Psychophysiology·Nicholas L BalderstonChristian Grillon
Feb 6, 2020·Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience·Eva LoosDominique J-F de Quervain
Aug 18, 2017·Learning & Memory·Nilam PatelMonique Ernst
Dec 6, 2018·Frontiers in Psychology·Martine Van PuyveldeNathalie Pattyn
Oct 19, 2020·International Journal of Psychophysiology : Official Journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology·Derek P SpanglerBruce H Friedman

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