A facilitative effect of negative affective valence on working memory.
Previous studies have shown that negatively valenced information impaired working memory performance due to an attention-capturing effect. The present study examined whether negative valence could also facilitate working memory. Affective words (negative, neutral, positive) were used as retro-cues in a working memory task that required participants to remember colors at different spatial locations on a computer screen. Following the cue, a target detection task was used to either shift attention to a different location or keep attention at the same location as the retro-cue. Finally, participants were required to discriminate the cued color from a set of distractors. It was found that negative cues yielded shorter response times (RTs) in the attention-shift condition and longer RTs in the attention-stay condition, compared with neutral and positive cues. The results suggest that negative affective valence may enhance working memory performance (RTs), provided that attention can be disengaged.
Gotoh
Fumiko
F
Doctoral Program in Psychology, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba City, Ibaraki 305-8572, Japan. fumigoto@human.tsukuba.ac.jp
Kikuchi
Tadashi
T
Olofsson
Ulrich
U
D000339:Affect / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult