Summary: Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) strongly predict variations in real-world cognitive functioning. However, little is known about how WMC is influenced by the ubiquitously present affective information in our everyday environments. Here, we present a series of 3 experiments investigating a novel WMC paradigm performed in affective (versus neutral) contexts. The paradigm requires simultaneous performance of a visuospatial search and a verbal storage task. These tasks are performed in the presence of either neutral or negative emotional distractor images. Experiments 1 & 2 confirmed our prediction that WMC would be reduced in the context of emotional compared to neutral distractors in student and community samples. Experiment 3 extended these findings to a clinical sample. WMC in motor vehicle accident survivors with a history of PTSD was selectively reduced in the presence of trauma-related emotional distraction compared to survivors without a history of PTSD. Implications of these findings for affective cognitive science are discussed.
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Individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) strongly predict variations in real-world cognitive functioning. However, little is known about how WMC is influenced by the ubiquitously present affective information in our everyday environments. Here, we present a series of 3 experiments investigating a novel WMC paradigm performed in affective (versus neutral) contexts. The paradigm requires simultaneous performance of a visuospatial search and a verbal storage task. These tasks are performed in the presence of either neutral or negative emotional distractor images. Experiments 1 & 2 confirmed our prediction that WMC would be reduced in the context of emotional compared to neutral distractors in student and community samples. Experiment 3 extended these findings to a clinical sample. WMC in motor vehicle accident survivors with a history of PTSD was selectively reduced in the presence of trauma-related emotional distraction compared to survivors without a history of PTSD. Implications of these findings for affective cognitive science are discussed.
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