Processing Of Emotional Information Research Articles

Investigating automatic emotion processing in boys with autism via eye tracking and facial mimicry recordings.

Difficulties in automatic emotion processing in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) might remain concealed in behavioral studies due to compensatory strategies. To gain more insight in the mechanisms underlying facial emotion recognition, we recorded eye tracking and facial mimicry data of 20 school-aged boys with ASD and 20 matched typically developing controls while performing an explicit emotion recognition task. Proportional looking times to specific face regions (eyes, nose, and mouth) and face exploration dynamics were analyzed. In addition, facial mimicry was assessed. Boys with ASD and controls were equally capable to recognize expressions and did not differ in proportional looking times, and number and duration of fixations. Yet, specific facial expressions elicited particular gaze patterns, especially within the control group. Both groups showed similar face scanning dynamics, although boys with ASD demonstrated smaller saccadic amplitudes. Regarding the facial mimicry, we found no emotion specific facial responses and no group differences in the responses to the displayed facial expressions. Our results indicate that boys with and without ASD employ similar eye gaze strategies to recognize facial expressions. Smaller saccadic amplitudes in boys with ASD might indicate a less exploratory face processing strategy. Yet, this slightly more persistent visual scanning behavior in boys with ASD does not imply less efficient emotion information processing, given the similar behavioral performance. Results on the facial mimicry data indicate similar facial responses to emotional faces in boys with and without ASD. LAY SUMMARY: We investigated (i) whether boys with and without autism apply different face exploration strategies when recognizing facial expressions and (ii) whether they mimic the displayed facial expression to a similar extent. We found that boys with and without ASD recognize facial expressions equally well, and that both groups show similar facial reactions to the displayed facial emotions. Yet, boys with ASD visually explored the faces slightly less than the boys without ASD.

Proteome profile of telencephalon associates attenuated neurogenesis with chronic stress induced mood disorder phenotypes in zebrafish model

Debilitating mental illness like depression and related mood disorders is due to the disruption in circuitry that controls emotion, motivation, and reward, characterized by disparate phenotypes like decrease in socialization, motivation, threshold for threat apprehension, etc. Chronic stress is a major factor in the etiology of these disorders. Here, using a chronic unpredictable stress (CUS) paradigm the characterization of an array of mood disorder phenotypes in adult zebrafish, in comparison to normal control unstressed fish, was achieved using a battery of behavioral assays including novel ones comprising social interaction test, feed approach test, threat response test and novel tank test. For the predictive validity of the model for mood disorders, the mitigative role of a slow (imipramine) and fast (ketamine) acting antidepressant was assessed. The molecular changes associated with CUS-induced mood disorder phenotype was investigated utilizing a high throughput method called isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ) in telencephalon, the region critically associated with the processing of emotional information in the fish brain. Out of 222 proteins identified to be significantly altered, 58 were differentially expressed across the stress and antidepressant-treatment groups at more than one fold (in log2) change. Of these proteins, some were implicated in earlier studies on mood disorders such as CABP1, PER2, mTOR, etc. The enrichment of altered proteins by Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) led us to mTOR and opioid signaling pathways, the top canonical pathways affected in the fish telencephalon. Interestingly, most of the pathways affected converge at the one controlling cell proliferation thus indicating altered neurogenesis, which was validated using immunohistochemistry for cell proliferation markers BrdU, SOX2, and BLBP. The study concludes that molecules that regulate telencephalon neural progenitor cell proliferation or neurogenesis are crucially involved in chronic stress-induced mood disorders by affecting the circuitry that controls emotion and reward.

Magnetisation transfer imaging revealed microstructural changes related to apathy symptoms after ischaemic stroke.

Apathy after stroke is common and has a negative impact on functional recovery. Neuroimaging correlates of poststroke apathy remain unclear. We aimed to investigate microstructural changes associated with the severity of poststroke apathy symptoms. We assessed 67 patients with cerebral ischaemia who underwent magnetisation transfer brain imaging 12-15 months after stroke. We used magnetisation transfer ratio (MTR) to represent microstructural integrity. We performed whole-brain voxel-based analysis and subsequent region of interest analysis to investigate the association between MTR and symptoms of poststroke apathy. To assess apathy symptoms, we used clinician-reported version of the Apathy Evaluation Scale. Voxel-based analysis showed the association between symptoms of apathy and decreased MTR in areas overlapping with structures located in both hemispheres: left thalamus, bilateral hippocampus, bilateral fornix/stria terminalis, right amygdala, splenium of the corpus callosum, the retrolenticular part of left internal capsule and left sagittal stratum. In the region of interest analysis, only lower MTR in right fornix/stria terminalis was associated with greater poststroke apathy symptoms in a multivariate logistic model (odds ratio: 1.25, 95% CI: 1.09-1.46, p=0.003). These associations were independent of depressive symptoms. Magnetisation transfer brain imaging 12-15 months after stroke revealed changes in microstructural integrity associated with apathy symptoms in brain areas related to processing emotional information and reward valuation.

Self-Positivity or Self-Negativity as a Function of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex.

Self and emotions are key motivational factors of a person strivings for health and well-being. Understanding neural mechanisms supporting the relationship between these factors bear far-reaching implications for mental health disorders. Recent work indicates a substantial overlap between self-relevant and emotion information processing and has proposed the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) as one shared neural signature. However, the precise cognitive and neural mechanisms represented by the MPFC in investigations of self- and emotion-related processing are largely unknown. Here we examined whether the neural underpinnings of self-related processing in the MPFC link to positive or negative emotions. We collected fMRI data to test the distinct and shared neural circuits of self- and emotion-related processing while participants performed personal (self, friend, or stranger) and emotion (happy, sad, or neutral) associative matching tasks. By exploiting tight control over the factors that determine the effects of self-relevance and emotions (positive: Happy vs. neutral; negative: Sad vs. neutral), our univariate analysis revealed that the ventral part of the MPFC (vmPFC), which has established involvement in self-prioritisation effects, was not recruited in the negative emotion prioritisation effect. In contrast, there were no differences in brain activity between the effects of positive emotion- and self-prioritisation. These results were replicated by both region of interest (ROI)-based analysis in the vmPFC and the seed- to voxel functional connectivity analysis between the MPFC and the rest of the brain. The results suggest that the prioritisation effects for self and positive emotions are tightly linked together, and the MPFC plays a large role in discriminating between positive and negative emotions in relation to self-relevance.

The Effect of Alexithymia on Attentional Bias Toward Emotional Stimuli in Depression: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Alexithymia—reflecting deficits in cognitive emotion processing—is highly prevalent in individuals with depressive disorders. Subsequently, mixed evidence for attentional bias is found in these individuals. Alexithymia may be a potential influencing factor for attentional bias in depression. In the current study, 83 currently depressed (CD) and 76 never-depressed (ND) controls completed an eye-tracker task consisting of valenced (non)-social pictures. Alexithymia scores were also included as a moderator as both a continuous and categorical measure (so high vs. low alexithymia). No group difference or moderating effect of alexithymia was found on attentional bias. Thus, alexithymic symptoms, included both dimensionally and categorically, may not influence biased attentional processing in depression compared to ND individuals. Thus, it is important to explore other potential explaining factors for the equivocal results found on biased attentional processing of emotional information in depression.

Recognition of Facial Emotion Expressions in Patients with Depressive Disorders: A Prospective, Observational Study.

IntroductionProcessing of emotional stimuli is altered in patients with depression. The present feasibility study investigated the features of emotional information recognition in people with depressive disorders and how these differ from individuals without depression to determine whether response times could potentially be used as a diagnostic marker to identify individuals at high risk of depression and as an indicator of antidepressant medication response.MethodsThe study recruited 32 individuals, 16 with single or recurrent depressive episodes and 16 control subjects without depression. Patients with depression received 8 weeks of antidepressant therapy. The severity of depressive symptoms at baseline and their changes on prescribed therapy were assessed using the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS). The processing of emotional information was assessed using the computerized Penn Emotion Recognition Task (ER-40).ResultsThe two groups were well matched in terms of age and gender. There was no difference between the groups in their ability to correctly recognize happy or sad emotional facial expressions, but the average time patients with depression took to recognize a happy face was significantly longer than controls. In addition, they were more likely to misinterpret facial expressions as non-emotional. In patients with depression, the mean MADRS total score decreased from 26.3 ± 4.4 at baseline to 11.1 ± 8.9 at 8 weeks, a reduction of 57.8%. The proportion of responders with greater than 50% reduction in their baseline MADRS total score was 64.3%. Antidepressive treatment was associated with a reduction in the mean time required for recognition of a happy face (P < 0.05).ConclusionsPatients with depression are slower to identify positive emotions but have a similar time to recognition of negative emotions as patients without depression. The greater time required for recognition of happiness distinguished the patients with depression from control subjects, and was also the only parameter that showed an improvement with antidepressant therapy, suggesting a specific relationship of this parameter with the depressive state.

Emojis influence emotional communication, social attributions, and information processing

Many emojis symbolize nonverbal cues that are used during face-to-face communication. Despite their popularity, few studies have examined how emojis influence digital interactions. The present study addresses this gap by measuring the impact of emojis on emotion interpretation, social attributions, and information processing. Participants read messages that are typical of social exchanges in instant text messaging (IM) accompanied by emojis that mimic negative, positive and neutral facial expressions. Sentence valence and emoji valence were paired in a fully crossed design such that verbal and nonverbal messages were either congruent or incongruent. Perceived emotional state of the sender, perceived warmth, and patterns of eye movements that reflect information processing were measured. A negativity effect was observed whereby the sender's mood was perceived as negative when a negative emoji and/or a negative sentence were presented. Moreover, the presence of a negative emoji intensified the perceived negativity of negative sentences. Adding a positive emoji to a message increased the perceived warmth of the sender. Finally, processing speed and understanding of verbal messages was enhanced by the presence of congruent emojis. Our results therefore support the use of emojis, and in particular positive emojis, to improve communication, express feelings, and make a positive impression during socially-driven digital interactions.

Processing of emotional information in working memory in major depressive disorder

Processing of emotional information in working memory in major depressive disorder

The foreign language effect in bilingualism: Examining prosocial sentiment after offense taking

AbstractThis study examines whether theforeign language effectmitigates reactions to value-inconsistent sociopolitical content. We examined 69 English–Spanish bilinguals and 31 Spanish–English heritage bilinguals, half of whom did the experiment in their native language and half in their second language. Participants were administered a survey in which trial emotiveness was manipulated by using the quantifiers some and all (e.g.,Some Trump supporters are racistsvs.All Trump supporters are racists). The some-types (n= 30) served as a baseline for the all-types (n= 30). After each target, participants rated their willingness to be prosocial (e.g., holding the door for a stranger) on a scale of 1–7, 1 beingtotally agreeand 7 beingtotally disagree. Our results suggest that processing emotional information in a second language is less emotional than in a first language and that such a decrease in emotionality results in the neutralization of offense taken. However, individual differences in linguistic profiles across participants, as well as contextual framing, lead to discrete value judgments. Proficiency, learner type, political affiliation, and context type affect willingness to engage in prosocial behavior. As a group, the bilinguals showed no decrease in their willingness to engage in such behaviors, regardless of context type; speakers of higher proficiency and stronger political values increase prosocial sentiment; and lower proficiency and weaker views lead to neutral prosocial sentiment.

Behavioral Regulatory Problems Are Associated With a Lower Attentional Bias to Fearful Faces During Infancy.

To investigate the role of early regulatory problems (RP), such as problems in feeding, sleeping, and calming down during later development, the association between parent-reported RP at 3months (no-RP, n=110; RP, n=66) and attention to emotional faces at 8months was studied. Eight-month-old infants had a strong tendency to look at faces and to specifically fearful faces, and the individual variance in this tendency was assessed with eye tracking using a face-distractor paradigm. The early RPs were related to a lower attention bias to fearful faces compared to happy and neutral faces after controlling for temperamental negative affectivity. This suggests that early RPs are related to the processing of emotional information later during infancy.

To pay attention or not: The associations between attentional bias towards negative emotional information and anxiety, guilt feelings, and experiential avoidance in dementia family caregivers.

Caring for a relative with dementia has been linked to negative consequences for caregivers’ psychological health, such as anxiety or guilt. Cognitive theories of psychopathology propose that attentional bias towards negative stimuli contribute to the development and maintenance of emotional disorders and clinical symptomatology. However, attentional bias has scarcely been explored in dementia family caregivers. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between attentional bias and anxiety symptomatology, guilt feelings, and experiential avoidance in a sample of dementia family caregivers. Participants were 226 dementia family caregivers. Attentional bias was measured using a novel priming adaptation of the dot-probe task. The sample was divided into high and low anxiety symptomatology, guilt feelings, and experiential avoidance groups. The results revealed two opposite patterns of emotional information processing in dementia family caregivers. While anxiety was found to be associated with an attentional preference for negative information, experiential avoidance was related to attentional avoidance of this information. Although guilt was also related to an attentional preference for negative information, this relationship was no longer significant when controlling for anxiety levels. These inflexible attentional patterns may have negative clinical consequences, given that in both cases relevant information necessary for adaptive coping with the stressful situation of caregiving may be unattended to or omitted.

Emotional working memory updating in individuals with borderline personality features

Background and objectivesIndividuals with features of borderline personality disorder (BPD) are highly sensitive to social rejection. Working memory (WM) may play a critical role in processing emotional interpersonal information in BPD. Yet, little is known about how emotional WM operations are related to sensitivity to rejection cues and BPD features. Therefore, this study examined relationships among emotional WM operations, rejection sensitivity, and BPD features. MethodsParticipants with BPD features (n = 39 with non-suicidal self-injury history; n = 47 without non-suicidal self-injury history) and healthy participants (n = 46) completed an emotional two-back task before and after a social exclusion induction (the Cyberball game). Results. Results showed that participants with BPD features were slower at discarding faces expressing anger and pain from WM compared to healthy individuals before the social exclusion induction. Participants with BPD features and a history of self-injury were also slower at entering happy faces into WM compared to the other participants. Moreover, across participants, slower WM discarding of angry and pain faces was associated with higher levels of rejection sensitivity. Finally, no group differences emerged with respect to WM entering and discarding operations for emotional faces in response to social exclusion. LimitationsThis study was conducted in a sample of undergraduate students and did not consider comorbidity with other forms of psychopathology. ConclusionsThese findings cast light on how emotional WM difficulties may be involved in how individuals with BPD process emotional interpersonal information.

Gender differences in functional connectivity of left-handers during the passage of an emotional stroop task

ntroduction. Neural correlates underlying the processing of emotional information, influence of emotional interference on cognitive control, gender difference in such activities remain a topic of research and discussion.Purpose. To study the connectivity of the brain regions involved in the processing of emotional information in left-handers, based on the EEG data obtained during their passage the emotional Stroop test (EST).Methods. EEG was registered during subjectpassage the EST successively two times. In EST a series including 240 words were presented at the center of the computer screen in one of two colors: red or green, words were emotional (negative) or neutral, shown in pseudorandom order. Some of these stimuli (target words names of animals and plants) participants were instructed to ignore (do not press any keys). Subjects were asked to respond with right hand (pressing P on a keyboard) for words printed in red and with left hand (pressing Q on a keyboard) for words printed in green. It was investigated source level functional connectivity (FC) in two groups of left-handers (17 to 22 years old): women (n=10) and men (n=10). FC was analysed between 21 regions of interest (ROI), selected on the base of fMRI research literature. Connections between ROIs were assessed using lagged phase synchronization (LPS) with eLORETA complex.Results. Statistically significant differences in FC by LPS between men and women groups were found only in first passage of EST. Particularly, FCof women, compared to men was: -higher between anterior cingulate cortex and left middle temporal area in delta band;-lower between left hippocampal formation and right frontal eye fields in beta-1;-and higher in beta-2 between right frontal eye fields and right anterior insula.were shorter for both emotional and neutral words. The interference effect was observed in both tests in women and only in the first test in men. Interference effect also was higher for responses with left hand for both groups. Repeated passage of the emotional Stroop test leads to reducing the effect of interference in men but not in women.Originality.The main neural networks have been identified, which in left-handed women are more involved in the processing of negative emotional information than in left-handed men.Conclusion. Compared to men, women have stronger connections of two areas of the brain involved in processing negatively colored emotional information, with other areas of the brain. The anterior cingulate cortex, which is considered to playan important role in attention and executive functions, is connected to the left middle temporal area, involved in the analysis of visual movement and words processing. Activation of theright anterior insular cortex, which is closely related to emotionalprocessing, is connected to the right frontal eye fields, which are known to play a key role in the goal directed eyes movements.Contrary, area of right frontal eye fields of men is more tightly connected to the contralateral left hippocampus, and is involved in semantic rather than emotional processing of information.Key words: emotional Stroop test;gender differences; left-handers; EEG; functional connectivity

ВИЯВ ЕМОЦІЙНОГО ЕФЕКТУ СТРУПА У СТУДЕНТІВ ПРИ РЕАГУВАННІ НА СЛОВА ІЗ СЕМАНТИЧНОГО ПОЛЯ "АЛКОГОЛЬ"

In practice, psychologists, social workers, forensic scientists, advertisers, etc. have to face the need to reveal hidden, unconscious or knowingly false information from a certain person. The use of the emotional Stroop test (EST), which is based on differences in the latent period (LP) of the reaction (response time) to emotionally colored and neutral words, can help. As a model, emotional words from the semantic field of "alcohol" were used during the EST passage by students. The survey involved students aged 18 to 23, 9 boys and 12 girls. The emotional Stroop effect (ESE) was revealed, namely a longer response time to emotionally colored words compared to neutral ones, which confirms the effectiveness of the EST technique to identify hidden tendencies of the subject. ESE is more pronounced in women than in men, which can probably be explained by more frequent alcohol consumption by men who do not see anything special in such stimuli. The connection between the LP reaction to emotional words and blood groups (according to the ABO system) in women was interesting. Women with the first blood group had longer LP reactions when performing EST compared with women with the second blood group, while women with the third blood group had intermediate values of the LP reaction. That is, like men, women with the second blood group did not see anything extraordinary in words from the semantic field of "alcohol". In women with the first blood group, the ESE was the highest and had the strongest difference between the reaction to neutral and emotional words for the left hand, which indicates the involvement of the right hemisphere in the processing of emotional information. The results obtained require additional research, as the sample was small. However, it can be assumed that the predisposition to alcohol consumption and emotional response to it is associated with blood type and biochemical characteristics of the organism, so further research in this area is promising.

ЕМОЦІЙНИЙ ІНТЕЛЕКТ ЯК ФАКТОР СТАНОВЛЕННЯ МАЙБУТНЬОГО ФАХІВЦЯ

The essence and features of the concept of emotional intelligence are considered. The essence of emotional intelligence is defined as a set of cognitive abilities to identify, understand and manage emotions, as well as knowledge, skills and abilities, operations and strategies of intellectual activity related to the processing and transformation of emotional information. The characteristics and prerequisites for the formation of emotional intelligence are identified. The forms and levels of development of emotional intelligence in ontogenesis are analyzed. The main advantages of the formation and development of emotional intelligence for successful employment and personal development are highlighted. A survey of students on awareness in the field of emotional intelligence and assessment of its level, which showed that 24.3% of respondents are interested in this topic in depth, 60% know only general information, and 15.7% first learned about this indicator. Despite the fact that not everyone understands the essence of emotional intelligence, almost half of respondents believe that the level of emotional intelligence is significant. A quarter of students believe that IQ is more important, and another 25% found it difficult to answer this question. The basic methods of development of emotional intelligence are offered. The role of emotional intelligence for managers and business is defined. It is determined that in today's business environment, authoritarian managers are much less likely to succeed in the long run than those who use a democratic style of government. If a manager wants to succeed in the business world now and in the future, it is important to understand the role of emotional intelligence in business today. The possibility of increasing the efficiency of management activities of the specialist through the development of emotional intelligence, which provides prospects for innovative development of the organization (enterprise).

The psychophysiological correlates of cognitive dissonance.

This preregistered study uses a combination of physiological measures to explore both the activation and reduction components of cognitive dissonance theory. More precisely, we use skin conductance to identify dissonance arousal, a short-term affective response to counter-attitudinal stimuli, and then use heart rate variability to measure dissonance reduction, which reflects longer-term patterns of emotional regulation and information processing. Our preliminary tests find weak evidence of dissonance arousal and no evidence of dissonance reduction using this physiological approach. We consequently reconsider (albeit optimistically) the use of physiology in future work on cognitive dissonance. We also discuss the implications of our findings for selective exposure and motivated reasoning.

Diagnostic Biomarker Exploration of Autistic Patients With Different Ages and Different Verbal Intelligence Quotients Based on Random Forest Model

As a neurodevelopmental disorder with complex pathogenesis, the existing diagnostic methods of autism still only rely on the scale method. In recent years, there have been some methods using machine learning to classify Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), and achieved good accuracy. However, the generalization of these models is poor, and the conclusions are inconsistent. The main reason is that most of them use single site dataset or private dataset for analysis, which will lead to one-sided conclusion. They did not analyze the phenotypic features of the dataset, such as handedness, gender, and age. In order to make the obtained brain diagnostic biomarkers of ASD more universal and generalized, instead of analyzing the dataset from a single site, the whole dataset is divided into subgroups according to age and Verbal Intelligence Quotient (VIQ), and then each subgroup is classified and analyzed by Random Forest (RF) model. The experimental results show that if all male subjects are used for classification, the accuracy of classification can only reach about 55%. By using the proposed grouping method and RF model, the classification accuracy for different subgroups will be improved by 3% ~ 17%. Through the analysis of the importance and difference of the features in each subgroup, we can find that the features obtained in the above experiments are closely related to the functions of speech, emotion, auditory and visual information processing. This may partly explain why ASD patients have speech, social disorder, repetitive behavior and narrow interests. The classification methods proposed and diagnostic biomarkers obtained in this paper may provide some reference for the clinical diagnosis and early treatment of ASD.

Effects of Parenting Environment on Child and Adolescent Social-Emotional Brain Function.

The caregiving environment that children and adolescents experience is critically important for their social-emotional development. Parenting may affect child social-emotional outcomes through its effects in shaping the child's developing brain. Research has begun to investigate effects of parenting on child and adolescent brain function in humans using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Here we review these initial studies. These studies find associations between parenting behavior and child and adolescent functional activation in neural networks involved in emotional arousal, emotion regulation (ER), reward processing, cognitive control, and social-emotional information processing. Findings from these studies suggest that higher negative parenting and lower positive parenting are generally associated with heightened activation in emotional arousal networks in response to negative emotional stimuli in youth. Further, findings indicate that lower positive parenting is associated with higher response in reward processing networks to monetary reward in youth. Finally, findings show that lower positive parenting predicts lower activation in cognitive control networks during cognitive control tasks and less adaptive neural responses to parent-specific stimuli. Several studies found these associations to be moderated by child sex or psychopathology risk status and we discuss these moderating factors and discuss implications of findings for children's social-emotional development.

Модуляция вызванных ответов мозга на биологически и социально значимые стимулы у женщин с рекуррентной депрессией

Study Objective: To study characteristic features of brain activity in women with recurrent depression (RD) using the tasks with emotional stimuli possessing biological or social importance. Study Design: Controlled randomized experimental trial. Materials and Methods. There were two groups: 42 patients with RD and 72 healthy women. Patients did not take medications before electroencephalogram (EEG) recording. The task was to differentiate between people and animals at 160 pictures: 80 pictures were neutral, and 80 pictures depicted angry/aggressive people or animals. Simple figures (clues) were demonstrated 2s before pictures, and no association was explained. A 128-channel EEG was recorded, and evoked brain reactions were analysed (0–700 ms from the clue). Differences between neutral and emotional pairs of conditions were determined (emotional modulation, EM). Study Results. Previous results for women with RD obtained in a larger sampling size and with a higher level of significance were confirmed. In healthy patients, EM was noted from 50 ms to 500 ms, whereas in patients with RD – from 130 ms to 700 ms for conditions where the clue was associated with neutral or ominous pictures of people. In clues with animals, EM was normally noted for components N170 and P200, while in patients with RD – for P200. Conclusion. Unconscious EM to socially important stimuli is preserved in RD, but it differs from the norm. Unconscious processing of emotional information associated with a biological threat causes lower component modulation. We observed a displacement of an “inert” EM towards posterior sections of the right hemisphere in women with RD. It can be assumed that such pattern demonstrates typical rigidity, an inclination to “stick” to unpleasant impressions; there are similar to pessimistic rumination. Keywords: emotional modulation, electroencephalogram, recurrent depression, visually evoked potentials.

Working Memory Capacity For Faces With Different Levels of Emotional Valence

Abstract The capacity of visual working memory (VWM) depends on the complexity of the stimuli being processed. Emotional characteristics increase stimulus complexity and can interfere with the competition for cognitive resources. Studies involving emotional information processing are scarce and still produce contradicting results. In the present study, we investigated the capacity of VWM for faces with positive, negative, and neutral expressions. A modified change-detection task was used in two experiments, in which the number of faces and the emotional valence were manipulated. The results showed that VWM has a storage capacity of approximately two faces, which is fewer than the storage capacity identified for simpler stimuli. Our results reinforce the evidence that working memory can dynamically distribute its storage resources depending on both the amount and the emotional nature of the stimuli.