title: The influence of a working memory task on affective perception of facial expressions.
abstract: In a dual-task paradigm, participants performed a spatial location working memory task and a forced two-choice perceptual decision task (neutral vs. fearful) with gradually morphed emotional faces (neutral ∼ fearful). Task-irrelevant word distractors (negative, neutral, and control) were experimentally manipulated during spatial working memory encoding. We hypothesized that, if affective perception is influenced by concurrent cognitive load using a working memory task, task-irrelevant emotional distractors would bias subsequent perceptual decision-making on ambiguous facial expression. We found that when either neutral or negative emotional words were presented as task-irrelevant working-memory distractors, participants more frequently reported fearful face perception - but only at the higher emotional intensity levels of morphed faces. Also, the affective perception bias due to negative emotional distractors correlated with a decrease in working memory performance. Taken together, our findings suggest that concurrent working memory load by task-irrelevant distractors has an impact on affective perception of facial expressions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Missouri Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Seung-Lark
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Lim
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas, United States of America; Center for Children's Healthy Lifestyle and Nutrition, Children's Mercy Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Amanda S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Bruce
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Missouri Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, United States of America.
authors.forename: Robin L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Aupperle
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D003657:Decision Making; D004644:Emotions; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D008875:Middle Aged; D010465:Perception; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011594:Psychometrics; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult