The emotional startle effect is disrupted by a concurrent working memory task.

摘要: Working memory (WM) processes are often thought to play an important role in the cognitive regulation of negative emotions. However, little is known about how they influence emotional processing. We report two experiments that tested whether a concurrent working task could modulate startle eyeblink effect, well-known index In both experiments, emotionally and neutral pictures were viewed conditions: "cognitive load" (CL) condition, which participants had actively maintain information while viewing pictures, control "no (NL) condition. Picture-viewing instructions identical across CL NL. results showed significant reduction modulation reflex condition compared NL These findings suggest WM disrupts processing even when directing visual focus on relevant information.