Emotional interference-based forgetting in short-term memory. Cognitive inhibition of pleasant but not unpleasant biologically relevant distractors.

Javier Garcã­A-Pacios,David Del Rã­O,Fernando Maestãº,Dolores Villalobos,Josã© M Ruiz-Vargas

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00582

Abstract

Emotional stimuli automatically recruit attentional resources. Although this usually brings more adaptive responses, it may suppose a disadvantage when emotional information is task-irrelevant and should be ignored. Previous studies have shown how emotional stimuli with a negative content exert a greater interference than neutral stimuli during a concurrent working memory (WM) task. However, the impact of positively valenced stimuli as interference has not been addressed to date. In three experiments and one re-analysis we explore the impact of pleasant and unpleasant emotional distractors during WM maintenance. The results suggest that our cognitive control can cope with the interference posed by pleasant distractors as well as with the interference posed by neutral stimuli. However, unpleasant distractors are harder to control in the context of WM maintenance. As unpleasant stimuli usually convey relevant information that we should not to ignore, our executive control seems to be less able to reallocate cognitive resources after unpleasant distraction.

Highlights

The effect of emotion on our cognition and behavior is an issue widely addressed by the psychological literature
Analysis of reaction times for correct responses showed this pattern, with slower responses after unpleasant than after neutral distraction. This suggests that unpleasant interference increases the probability of forgetting and produces higher cognitive costs even for successful performance. This effect may be explained under the concept of motivated attention (Bradley et al, 2003) which refers to the automatic attentional resources captured by those stimuli that represent information linked to survival
In accordance with the first experiment and previous literature, the highest forgetting occurs after unpleasant distraction, extending previous evidence to show that unpleasant events can work as powerful interferences for working memory (WM) maintenance (Dolcos and McCarthy, 2006; Dolcos et al, 2008; Anticevic et al, 2010; Chuah et al, 2010; Denkova et al, 2010)

Summary

Introduction

The effect of emotion on our cognition and behavior is an issue widely addressed by the psychological literature. The wealthy interactions between these “hot” and “cold” systems have attracted widespread attention. Emotional stimuli automatically fall into the focus of our attention (Mogg et al, 1997; Ohman et al, 2001; Armony and Dolan, 2002). Such an effect is explained by their biological relevance, since emotional stimuli contain information that is important for survival (e.g., food or predators) (LeDoux, 1996; Ohman et al, 2000; Anderson and Phelps, 2001). The concept of “motivated attention” (Lang et al, 1993, 1998b) proposes that emotional information seems to have a privileged access to our cognitive system, by recruiting attentional resources automatically

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