Mood, Emotive Content, and Reasoning

Mood, Emotive Content, and Reasoning - Daniel Zahra Theories of how individuals reason, and how they experience emotion abound in the psychological literature; yet, despite the common lay-theories of how emotions might affect a person’s reasoning, very little empirical work has been conducted on this relationship. The current thesis addresses this knowledge-gap by first distilling from the literature two classes of emotion theory; Information, and Load; and then systematically testing the explanatory power of these theories. A dual-process framework is employed in order to define low (Type One) and high effort (Type Two) strategies. Information theories predict that negative emotion cues more analytic processing relative to positive emotion, whereas load theories predict both positive and negative emotion to suppress use of high-effort strategies. Thus the two theories are compared by varying incidental and integral emotion across syllogistic reasoning, conditional reasoning, and the ratio-bias task, and assessing the engagement of Type One and Type Two processes across positive emotion, negative emotion, and control conditions. The findings suggest that emotion effects in syllogistic reasoning do not consistently support either Load or Information theories (Experiments 1-4). Emotion effects are found to be typically larger for integral than incidental emotion (Experiment 5), and most frequently serve as Information in verbal (Experiments 6 and 7) and visual conditional reasoning tasks (Experiment 8). Furthermore, these effects are to a large extent dependent on task properties such as the number of alternative antecedents (Experiments 9 and 10), and are greater on more difficult tasks (Experiments 11 and 12). These findings suggest that emotion has a greater impact on Type Two than Type One processes. A range of methodological and theoretical implications which will inform future work in this area are also discussed in the closing chapter.ESR

Prefrontal inhibition of threat processing reduces working memory interference

Bottom-up processes can interrupt ongoing cognitive processing in order to adaptively respond to emotional stimuli of high potential significance, such as those that threaten wellbeing. However it is vital that this interference can be modulated in certain contexts to focus on current tasks. Deficits in the ability to maintain the appropriate balance between cognitive and emotional demands can severely impact on day-to-day activities. This fMRI study examined this interaction between threat processing and cognition; 18 adult participants performed a visuospatial working memory (WM) task with two load conditions, in the presence and absence of anxiety induction by threat of electric shock. Threat of shock interfered with performance in the low cognitive load condition; however interference was eradicated under high load, consistent with engagement of emotion regulation mechanisms. Under low load the amygdala showed significant activation to threat of shock that was modulated by high cognitive load. A directed top-down control contrast identified two regions associated with top-down control; ventrolateral PFC and dorsal ACC. Dynamic causal modeling provided further evidence that under high cognitive load, top-down inhibition is exerted on the amygdala and its outputs to prefrontal regions. Additionally, we hypothesized that individual differences in a separate, non-emotional top-down control task would predict the recruitment of dorsal ACC and ventrolateral PFC during top-down control of threat. Consistent with this, performance on a separate dichotic listening task predicted dorsal ACC and ventrolateral PFC activation during high WM load under threat of shock, though activation in these regions did not directly correlate with WM performance. Together, the findings suggest that under high cognitive load and threat, top-down control is exerted by dACC and vlPFC to inhibit threat processing, thus enabling WM performance without threat-related interference

Angry expressions strengthen the encoding and maintenance of face identity representations in visual working memory

This work was funded by a BBSRC grant (BB/G021538/2) to all authors.Peer reviewedPreprin

Affective attention under cognitive load: reduced emotional biases but emergent anxiety-related costs to inhibitory control

Trait anxiety is associated with deficits in attentional control, particularly in the ability to inhibit prepotent responses. Here, we investigated this effect while varying the level of cognitive load in a modified antisaccade task that employed emotional facial expressions (neutral, happy, and angry) as targets. Load was manipulated using a secondary auditory task requiring recognition of tones (low load), or recognition of specific tone pitch (high load). Results showed that load increased antisaccade latencies on trials where gaze toward face stimuli should be inhibited. This effect was exacerbated for high anxious individuals. Emotional expression also modulated task performance on antisaccade trials for both high and low anxious participants under low cognitive load, but did not influence performance under high load. Collectively, results (1) suggest that individuals reporting high levels of anxiety are particularly vulnerable to the effects of cognitive load on inhibition, and (2) support recent evidence that loading cognitive processes can reduce emotional influences on attention and cognition

Incidental threat during visuospatial working memory in adolescent anxiety: an emotional memory-guided saccade task

BackgroundPediatric anxiety disorders are among the most common psychiatric mental illnesses in children and adolescents, and are associated with abnormal cognitive control in emotional, particularly threat, contexts. In a series of studies using eye movement saccade tasks, we reported anxiety-related alterations in the interplay of inhibitory control with incentives, or with emotional distractors. The present study extends these findings to working memory (WM), and queries the interaction of spatial WM with emotional stimuli in pediatric clinical anxiety. MethodsParticipants were 33 children/adolescents diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and 22 age-matched healthy comparison youths. Participants completed a novel eye movement task, an affective variant of the memory-guided saccade task. This task assessed the influence of incidental threat on spatial WM processes during high and low cognitive load. ResultsHealthy but not anxious children/adolescents showed slowed saccade latencies during incidental threat in low-load but not high-load WM conditions. No other group effects emerged on saccade latency or accuracy. ConclusionsThe current data suggest a differential pattern of how emotion interacts with cognitive control in healthy youth relative to anxious youth. These findings extend data from inhibitory processes, reported previously, to spatial WM in pediatric anxiety

Probing emotional influences on cognitive control: an ALE meta-analysis of cognition emotion interactions

Increasing research documents an integration of cognitive control and affective processes. Despite a surge of interest in investigating the exact nature of this integration, no consensus has been reached on the precise neuroanatomical network involved. Using the Activation Likelihood Estimation meta-analysis method, we examined 43 functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies (total number of foci = 332; total number of participants, N =820) from the literature that have reported significant interactions between emotion and cognitive control. Meta-analytic results revealed that concurrent emotion (relative to emotionally neutral trials) consistently increased neural activation during high relative to low cognitive control conditions across studies and paradigms. Specifically, these activations emerged in regions commonly implicated in cognitive control such as the lateral prefrontal cortex (inferior frontal junction, inferior frontal gyrus), the medial prefrontal cortex, and the basal ganglia. In addition, some areas emerged during the interaction contrast that were not present during one of the main effects and included the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex and the precuneus. These data provide new evidence for a network of cognition emotion interaction within a cognitive control setting. The findings are discussed within current theories of cognitive and attentional control

Low attentional engagement makes attention network activity susceptible to emotional interference

The aim of this study was to investigate whether emotion-attention interaction depends on attentional engagement. To investigate emotional modulation of attention network activation, we used a functional MRI paradigm consisting of a visuospatial attention task with either frequent (high-engagement) or infrequent (low-engagement) targets and intermittent emotional or neutral distractors. The attention task recruited a bilateral frontoparietal network with no emotional interference on network activation when the attentional engagement was high. In contrast, when the attentional engagement was low, the unpleasant stimuli interfered with the activation of the frontoparietal attention network, especially in the right hemisphere. This study provides novel evidence for low attentional engagement making attention control network activation susceptible to emotional interference. © 2014 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.Fil: Exposito, Veronica. Fundación para la Lucha contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Tampere; FinlandiaFil: Pickard, Natasha. California State University; Estados UnidosFil: Solbakk, Anne-Kristin. University of Oslo; NoruegaFil: Ogawa, Keith H.. Saint Mary's College Of California; Estados UnidosFil: Knight, Robert T.. California State University; Estados UnidosFil: Hartikainen, Kaisa M.. Universidad de Tampere; Finlandi

Neural correlates of enhanced visual short-term memory for angry faces: An fMRI study

Copyright: © 2008 Jackson et al.Background: Fluid and effective social communication requires that both face identity and emotional expression information are encoded and maintained in visual short-term memory (VSTM) to enable a coherent, ongoing picture of the world and its players. This appears to be of particular evolutionary importance when confronted with potentially threatening displays of emotion - previous research has shown better VSTM for angry versus happy or neutral face identities.Methodology/Principal Findings: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, here we investigated the neural correlates of this angry face benefit in VSTM. Participants were shown between one and four to-be-remembered angry, happy, or neutral faces, and after a short retention delay they stated whether a single probe face had been present or not in the previous display. All faces in any one display expressed the same emotion, and the task required memory for face identity. We find enhanced VSTM for angry face identities and describe the right hemisphere brain network underpinning this effect, which involves the globus pallidus, superior temporal sulcus, and frontal lobe. Increased activity in the globus pallidus was significantly correlated with the angry benefit in VSTM. Areas modulated by emotion were distinct from those modulated by memory load.Conclusions/Significance: Our results provide evidence for a key role of the basal ganglia as an interface between emotion and cognition, supported by a frontal, temporal, and occipital network.The authors were supported by a Wellcome Trust grant (grant number 077185/Z/05/Z) and by BBSRC (UK) grant BBS/B/16178

High working memory load impairs reappraisal but facilitates distraction : an event-related potential investigation

The present experiments investigated the impact of working memory (WM) load on emotion regulation (ER) efficacy using reappraisal (Experiment 1, n = 30) and distraction (Experiment 2, n = 30). Considering that WM is necessary for storage, elaboration, and manipulation of information and that reappraisal acts by storing, elaborating, and manipulating the stimulus meaning, we hypothesized that high (versus low) WM-load would reduce reappraisal efficacy. By contrast, given that distraction acts by blocking elaborated processing of the stimulus meaning, we expected that high WM-load would enhance distraction efficacy. To test these predictions, we employed a dual-task paradigm in which a low- or high WM-load task was combined with an ER (reappraisal or distraction) task. We measured the Late Positive Potential (LPP)–an electrocortical marker of sustained motivated attention, and a well-established index of emotional arousal–in response to negative pictures. Results confirmed that although reappraisal successfully reduced the LPP amplitude in the down- compared to up-regulation condition in low WM-load trials, high WM-load eliminated this difference, suggesting the disrupting influence of high WM-load on ER for reappraisal (Experiment 1). By contrast, although distraction failed to modulate the LPP amplitude in low WM-load trials, the difference between down- and no-regulation conditions was significant when distraction was combined with high WM-load, suggesting the facilitatory influence of high WM-load on ER for distraction (Experiment 2). Our findings show that the effect of WM-load on ER is strategy-dependent, and that the availability of WM resources is an important situational moderator of ER efficacy in healthy young adults

The role of automaticity and attention in neural processes underlying empathy for happiness, sadness, and anxiety.

Although many studies have examined the neural basis of empathy, relatively little is known about how empathic processes are affected by different attentional conditions. Thus, we examined whether instructions to empathize might amplify responses in empathy-related regions and whether cognitive load would diminish the involvement of these regions. Thirty-two participants completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging session assessing empathic responses to individuals experiencing happy, sad, and anxious events. Stimuli were presented under three conditions: watching naturally, actively empathizing, and under cognitive load. Across analyses, we found evidence for a core set of neural regions that support empathic processes (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, DMPFC; medial prefrontal cortex, MPFC; temporoparietal junction, TPJ; amygdala; ventral anterior insula, AI; and septal area, SA). Two key regions-the ventral AI and SA-were consistently active across all attentional conditions, suggesting that they are automatically engaged during empathy. In addition, watching vs. empathizing with targets was not markedly different and instead led to similar subjective and neural responses to others' emotional experiences. In contrast, cognitive load reduced the subjective experience of empathy and diminished neural responses in several regions related to empathy and social cognition (DMPFC, MPFC, TPJ, and amygdala). The results reveal how attention impacts empathic processes and provides insight into how empathy may unfold in everyday interactions