Abstract
This study investigated the role of attentional resources in processing emotional faces in working memory (WM). Participants memorised two face arrays with the same emotion but different identities and were required to judge whether the test face had the same identity as one of the previous faces. Concurrently during encoding and maintenance, a sequence of high-orlow pitched tones (high load) or white noise bursts (low load) was presented, and participants were required to count how many low-tones were heard. Experiments 1 and 2 used an emotional
and neutral test face, respectively. Results revealed a significant WM impairment for sad and angry faces in the high load vs low load condition but not for happy faces. In Experiment 1, participants remembered happy faces better than other emotional faces. In contrast, Experiment 2 showed that performance was poorer for happy than sad faces but not for angry faces. This evidence suggests that depleting attentional resources has less impact on WM for happy faces than other emotional faces, but also that differential effects on WM for emotional faces depend on the presence or absence of emotion in the probe face at retrieval.
and neutral test face, respectively. Results revealed a significant WM impairment for sad and angry faces in the high load vs low load condition but not for happy faces. In Experiment 1, participants remembered happy faces better than other emotional faces. In contrast, Experiment 2 showed that performance was poorer for happy than sad faces but not for angry faces. This evidence suggests that depleting attentional resources has less impact on WM for happy faces than other emotional faces, but also that differential effects on WM for emotional faces depend on the presence or absence of emotion in the probe face at retrieval.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1696-1709 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology |
Volume | 76 |
Issue number | 7 |
Early online date | 3 Sept 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jul 2023 |
Bibliographical note
FundingThe author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation under Grant (FAPESP 2017/09368-1); National Council for Scientific and Technological Development under Grant (CNPq 140055/2017-7). RBG was supported by the FAPESP grant (2015/23331-8) and by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—Brasil (CAPES)—Finance Code 001. CG was supported by National Council for Scientific and Technological Development under Grant (CNPq 307791/2018-1).
Data Availability Statement
The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within its supplementary materials.Keywords
- visual working memory
- attention
- face recognition
- emotion