Little is known on how emotion information is processed in the working memory system, especially
in the visuo-spatial domain. The aim of the present research was to investigate the effect of
incidentally learned emotional stimuli on short-term memory for object-location. In the two
experiments presented we sought to ascertain the role of valence in spatial working memory by
keeping the level of pictures’ arousal constant, and by modulating the level of pictures’ valence.
Participants (N=18 in Experiment A; N=21 in Experiment B) were submitted to a modified version
of the object relocation task: eight black rectangles appeared (1s) simultaneously on the screen of a
computer; this was immediately followed by the sequential presentation of 8 pictures selected from
the International Affective Picture System (1s for each picture; ISI: 250 ms) superimposed onto
each rectangle. Rectangle position was tagged with pictures with comparable arousal levels,
negative and neutral in Experiment A, and positive and neutral in Experiment B. In both cases
valence is a within-subject factor. Immediately after presentation, participants had to relocate the
black rectangles in the original position as accurately as possible. The statistical analyses (paired t-
tests) carried out on displacement errors revealed a significant effect of valence: lower displacement
errors for negative-related objects compared to neutral ones (t(17) = −2.89; p < 0.05) in Experiment
A, and lower displacement errors for objects associated to positive pictures than those associated to
neutral ones (t(20) = 2.28; p < 0.05) in Experiment B. Overall, findings show that when arousal is
kept constant (at a low level) the position of negative-related objects (Experiment A) or positive-
related object (Experiment B) are better relocated than neutral ones in an immediate visuo-spatial
working memory test, thus indicating that valence significantly affects visuo-spatial performance
