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Effects of facial expression on working memory

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Author

Summary, in English

In long-term memory (LTM) emotional content may both enhance and impair memory, however, disagreement remains whether emotional content exerts different effects on the ability to maintain and manipulate information over short intervals. Using a working-memory (WM) recognition task requiring the monitoring of faces displaying facial expressions of emotion, participants judged each face as identical (target) or not (non-target) to that presented 2 trials back (2-back). Negative expression was better and faster recognised, illustrated by higher target discriminability and target detection. Positive and negative expressions also induced a more liberal detection bias compared with neutral. Taking the preceding item into account, additional accuracy impairment (negative preceding negative target) and enhancement effects (negative or positive preceding neutral target) appeared. This illustrates a differential modulation of WM based on the affective tone of the target (mirroring LTM enhancement- and recognition bias effects), and of the preceding item (enhanced and impaired target detection).

Publishing year

2016-08-01

Language

English

Pages

312-317

Publication/Series

International Journal of Psychology

Volume

51

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Psychology Press

Topic

  • Psychology

Keywords

  • Recognition bias
  • Emotion-induced impairment
  • Emotion-induced enhancement
  • Facial expression
  • Two-back

Status

Published

Research group

  • Division of Cognitive Psychology

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1464-066X