Escaping capture: bilingualism modulates distraction from working memory

We ask whether bilingualism aids cognitive control over the inadvertent guidance of visual attention from working memory and from bottom-up cueing. We compare highly-proficient Catalan-Spanish bilinguals with Spanish monolinguals in three visual search conditions. In the working memory (WM) condition, attention was driven in a top-down fashion by irrelevant objects held in WM. In the Identify condition, attention was driven in a bottom-up fashion by visual priming. In the Singleton condition, attention was driven in a bottom-up fashion by including a unique distracting object in the search array. The results showed that bilinguals were overall faster than monolinguals in the three conditions, replicating previous findings that bilinguals can be more efficient than monolinguals in the deployment of attention. Interestingly, bilinguals were less captured by irrelevant information held in WM but were equally affected by visual priming and unique singletons in the search displays. These observations suggest that bilingualism aids top-down WM-mediated guidance of attention, facilitating processes that keep separate representations in WM from representations that guide visual attention. In contrast, bottom-up attentional capture by salient yet unrelated input operates similarly in bilinguals and monolinguals.     

Resisting emotional interference: Brain regions facilitating working memory performance during negative distraction

Survival-relevant information has privileged access to our awareness even during active cognitive engagement. Previous work has demonstrated that during working memory (WM) negative emotional distraction disrupts activation in the lateral prefrontal regions while also engaging the amygdala. Here, using slow eventrelated fMRI, we replicate and extend previous work examining the effect of negative emotional distraction on WM: (1) We demonstrate that prefrontal regions showed activation differences between correct and incorrect trials during negative, but not neutral, distraction. Specifically, frontopolar prefrontal cortex showed more deactivation for incorrect trials faced with negative distraction, whereas ventrolateral prefrontal regions showed less activation; (2) individual differences in amygdala activity predicted WM performance during negative as well as neutral distraction, such that lower activity predicted better performance; and (3) amygdala showed negative correlations with prefrontal and parietal cortical regions during resting state. However, during negative distraction, amygdala signals were more negatively correlated with prefrontal cortical regions than was found for resting state and neutral distraction. These results provide further evidence for an inverse relationship between dorsal prefrontal cortical regions and the amygdala when processing aversive stimuli competes with ongoing cognitive operations, and further support the importance of the prefrontal cortex in resisting emotional interference. Supplemental materials associated with this article may be downloaded from http://cabn.psychonomic-journals .org/content/supplemental.     

Training the removal of negative information from working memory: A preliminary investigation of a working memory bias modification task

Rumination in depressed adults is associated with a bias toward retaining negative information in working memory. We developed a task designed to modify this cognitive bias by having subjects repeatedly practice removing negative words from working memory, thereby enabling them to retain positive and neutral words. To assess the efficacy of this task, we recruited 60 adults who reported elevated repetitive negative thought (RNT) and randomly assigned them to receive a single administration of either the working memory bias modification (WMBM) task or a control task. Subjects in the WMBM condition exhibited greater reduction in proactive interference for negative information than did those in the control condition. These results suggest that the WMBM task reduces biased retention of negative information in working memory and, thus, may be useful in investigating the possible causal role of this cognitive bias in RNT or depression.     

Playing with fire: effects of negative mood induction and working memory on vocabulary acquisition

We investigated the impact of emotions on learning vocabulary in an unfamiliar language to better understand affective influences in foreign language acquisition. Seventy native English speakers learned new vocabulary in either a negative or a neutral emotional state. Participants also completed two sets of working memory tasks to examine the potential mediating role of working memory. Results revealed that participants exposed to negative stimuli exhibited difficulty in retrieving and correctly pairing English words with Indonesian words, as reflected in a lower performance on the prompted recall tests and the free recall measure. Emotional induction did not change working memory scores from pre to post manipulation. This suggests working memory could not explain the reduced vocabulary learning in the negative group. We argue that negative mood can adversely affect language learning by suppressing aspects of native-language processing and impeding form-meaning mapping with second language words.     

Applying a dual process model of self-regulation: The association between executive working memory capacity,negative urgency,and negative mood induction on pre-potent response inhibition

This study tested a dual-process model of self-control where the combination of high impulsivity (negative urgency – NU), weak reflective/control processes (low executive working memory capacity – E-WMC), and a cognitive load is associated with increased failures to inhibit pre-potent responses on a cued go/no-go task. Using a within-subjects design, a cognitive load with and without negative emotional load was implemented to consider situational factors. Results suggested that: (1) high NU was associated with low E-WMC; (2) low E-WMC significantly predicted more inhibitory control failures across tasks; and (3) there was a significant interaction of E-WMC and NU, revealing those with low E-WMC and high NU had the highest rates of inhibitory control failures on all conditions of the task. In conclusion, results suggest that while E-WMC is a strong independent predictor of inhibitory control, NU provides additional information for vulnerability to problems associated with self-regulation.     

Visual distraction, working memory, and aging

In two experiments, the effects of taxing selective attention processes on the efficiency of working memory processes were considered in relation to normal aging. In both experiments, the presence of task-irrelevant information disrupted the efficiency of working memory processes, and the effect was generally greater for older than for younger adults. The presence of distracting information increased the frequency of intrusion errors in both younger and older adults and of memory-based errors in older adults. These findings suggest that distraction disrupts both the ability to maintain a coherent stream of goal-directed thought and action in younger and older adults and the encoding and retention of relevant information in older adults.     

The relationship of negative mood regulation expectancies with rumination and distraction

Individuals high in negative mood regulation expectancies believe that a wide variety of actions has the potential to improve their negative mood. According to response expectancy theory, negative mood regulation expectancies affect mood in a nonvolitional and self-confirming manner. The present study evaluated this claim by assessing the ability of negative mood regulation expectancies to predict current depression after controlling for a variety of volitional coping responses, including rumination, distraction, active coping, and avoidant coping. 105 Introduction to Psychology college students at the University of Connecticut, 47 men and 58 women (M age = 20.3 yr., SD = 1.5), completed measures of each of the latter constructs for course credit. Results were consistent with response expectancy theory: negative mood regulation expectancies predicted current depression above and beyond coping behaviors. In addition, higher negative mood regulation expectancies were associated with greater use of adaptive coping responses. Results of this study further support the notion that effects of negative mood regulation expectancies on mood cannot be fully accounted for by intentional coping behaviors.     

Updating the contents of working memory in depression: interference from irrelevant negative material

This study was designed to assess the effects of irrelevant emotional material on the ability to update the contents of working memory in depression. For each trial, participants were required to memorize 2 lists of emotional words and subsequently to ignore 1 of the lists. The impact of irrelevant emotional material on the ability to update the contents of working memory was indexed by response latencies on a recognition task in which the participants decided whether or not a probe was a member of the relevant list. The authors compared response latencies to probes from the irrelevant list to response latencies to novel probes of the same valence (intrusion effect). The results indicate that, compared to control participants in both neutral and sad mood states, depressed participants showed greater intrusion effects when presented with negative words. In an important finding, intrusion effects for negative words were correlated with self-reported rumination. These findings indicate that depression is associated with difficulties removing irrelevant negative material from working memory. Results also indicate that the increased interference from irrelevant negative material is associated with rumination.     

Self-compassion,a better alternative to rumination than distraction as a response to negative mood

Self-compassion – having a healthy, mindful and kind self-attitude – may be a better way to cope with negative experiences than distraction. This was tested in 152 undergraduates who underwent a negative mood induction and then completed either a self-compassionate writing task or a distraction task. Results showed that participants who wrote self-compassionately experienced increases in positive affect while participants who distracted experienced reductions in positive affect. Both groups significantly reduced in negative affect; however, there was no significant difference between them. An interaction was found between rumination and time, demonstrating that high ruminators experienced greater reduction of sadness than low ruminators. The current findings demonstrate greater short-term benefits of approaching a negative mood using self-compassion compared to distraction and results are discussed in the context of the broaden and build theory of positive emotions.     

Understanding the role of mind wandering in stress-related working memory impairments

Mind wandering has been identified as a possible cause for stress-related working memory (WM) task impairments following laboratory stressors. The current study attempted to induce mind wandering regarding negative, positive, or neutral events using an expressive writing task and examined the impact on WM task performance. We examined the role of mind wandering in understanding the impact of life stress on WM. Additionally, we explored the role of thought suppression on the relationship between mind wandering and WM. One hundred and fifty participants completed WM measures before (Time 1) and after (Time 2) the writing manipulation. The writing manipulation did not alter mind wandering or WM task performance. Time 1 WM predicted mind wandering during the Time 2 WM task, which subsequently predicted poorer Time 2 WM task performance. The impact of daily life stress on WM was mediated by mind wandering. Trait levels of thought suppression moderated the impact of mind wandering on WM. Specifically, higher levels of suppression resulted in stronger negative impact of mind wandering on WM task performance. Findings are discussed in terms of the impact of mind wandering on WM task performance.     

Stressing the mind: the effect of cognitive load and articulatory suppression on attentional guidance from working memory

Four experiments explored the effect of cognitive load on the time course of top-down guidance of attention from working memory (WM). Observers had to search for a target presented among several distractors, with the target and distractor stimuli embedded inside different objects. On half of the trials, one of the distractor objects was cued by a matching item held in WM. When a single item was maintained in memory, search performance was impaired relative to a neutral baseline, where the memory and search displays did not match. These effects of WM on subsequent search were reduced by including a verbal suppression task during the WM and search displays, and by varying the WM load. The degree of competition for resources in WM is a key factor in determining the time course and magnitude of the interaction between WM and visual selection.     

Catching a glimpse of working memory: top-down capture as a tool for measuring the content of the mind

This article outlines a methodology for probing working memory (WM) content in high-level cognitive tasks (e.g., decision making, problem solving, and memory retrieval) by capitalizing on attentional and oculomotor biases evidenced in top-down capture paradigms. This method would be of great use, as it could measure the information resident in WM at any point in a task and, hence, track information use over time as tasks dynamically evolve. Above and beyond providing a measure of information occupancy in WM, such a method would benefit from sensitivity to the specific activation levels of individual items in WM. This article additionally forwards a novel fusion of standard free recall and visual search paradigms in an effort to assess the sensitivity of eye movements in top-down capture, on which this new measurement technique relies, to item-specific memory activation (ISMA). The results demonstrate eye movement sensitivity to ISMA in some, but not all, cases.     

Individual differences in working memory capacity and dual-process theories of the mind

Dual-process theories of the mind are ubiquitous in psychology. A central principle of these theories is that behavior is determined by the interplay of automatic and controlled processing. In this article, the authors examine individual differences in the capacity to control attention as a major contributor to differences in working memory capacity (WMC). The authors discuss the enormous implications of this individual difference for a host of dual-process theories in social, personality, cognitive, and clinical psychology. In addition, the authors propose several new areas of investigation that derive directly from applying the concept of WMC to dual-process theories of the mind.     

Effect of negative emotional content on working memory and long-term memory

In long-term memory, negative information is better remembered than neutral information. Differences in processes important to working memory may contribute to this emotional memory enhancement. To examine the effect that the emotional content of stimuli has on working memory performance, the authors asked participants to perform working memory tasks with negative and neutral stimuli. Task accuracy was unaffected by the emotional content of the stimuli. Reaction times also did not differ for negative relative to neutral words, but on an n-back task using faces, participants were slower to respond to fearful faces than to neutral faces. These results suggest that although emotional content does not have a robust effect on working memory, in some instances emotional salience can impede working memory performance.     

What's on your mind: The influence of the contents of working memory on choice

Information maintained in working memory (WM) has the potential to bias selective attention and limit executive attention. The current study assessed the influence of information in WM on the tasks one chooses to perform in a multitasking environment. Participants held either identities or locations in WM while performing voluntary task-switching trials on stimuli that did or did not match the information they were attempting to maintain. A bias toward performing the task associated with stimuli that had recently been encoded into WM was found. The results suggest that information in WM can influence choice within a multitasking environment.     

Linking working memory and long-term memory: a computational model of the learning of new words

The nonword repetition (NWR) test has been shown to be a good predictor of children's vocabulary size. NWR performance has been explained using phonological working memory, which is seen as a critical component in the learning of new words. However, no detailed specification of the link between phonological working memory and long-term memory (LTM) has been proposed. In this paper, we present a computational model of children's vocabulary acquisition (EPAM-VOC) that specifies how phonological working memory and LTM interact. The model learns phoneme sequences, which are stored in LTM and mediate how much information can be held in working memory. The model's behaviour is compared with that of children in a new study of NWR, conducted in order to ensure the same nonword stimuli and methodology across ages. EPAM-VOC shows a pattern of results similar to that of children: performance is better for shorter nonwords and for wordlike nonwords, and performance improves with age. EPAM-VOC also simulates the superior performance for single consonant nonwords over clustered consonant nonwords found in previous NWR studies. EPAM-VOC provides a simple and elegant computational account of some of the key processes involved in the learning of new words: it specifies how phonological working memory and LTM interact; makes testable predictions; and suggests that developmental changes in NWR performance may reflect differences in the amount of information that has been encoded in LTM rather than developmental changes in working memory capacity.     

Retrieving positive memories to regulate negative mood: consequences for mood-congruent memory

Several researchers have suggested that mood-incongruency effects are due to a mood-regulatory process in which people retrieve positive memories to repair negative moods. The present studies tested this idea by manipulating mood-repair strategies and examining their impact on positive and negative memory retrieval. Mood-congruent retrieval occurred when participants stayed focused on events associated with their negative mood; mood-incongruent retrieval occurred when participants engaged in positive reappraisal (when they reinterpreted events as having positive outcomes). The effects of these strategies on memory retrieval also interacted with personality traits related to negative mood regulation. Individuals high in such traits showed stronger mood-incongruent memory than did individuals low in negative mood-regulation traits. Discussion focuses on integrating mood-regulatory variables and personality variables into existing mood-congruency theories (e.g., associative network models).     

A slow wave investigation of working memory biases in mood disorders

Mood-congruent working memory biases were examined in a delayed matching to sample paradigm using the slow wave (SW) event-related brain potential (ERP) component. Mood-congruent working memory biases, indexed by SW amplitudes, were demonstrated among individuals experiencing a major depressive episode (MDE) and nondepressed controls but not individuals with dysthymia. However, analyses of symptom severity demonstrated that those with dysthymia exhibited significantly less negative SW amplitudes with increasing depressive mood severity, whereas individuals with major depression demonstrated more negative SW amplitudes with increasing depressive mood severity. These results are discussed in the context of diagnostic specificity for cognitive biases associated with working memory of mood-disordered individuals.     

Attention on our mind: The role of spatial attention in visual working memory

The current study shows that spatial visual attention is used to retrieve information from visual working memory. Participants had to keep four colored circles in visual working memory. While keeping this information in memory we asked whether one of the colors was present in the array. While retrieving this information, on some trials a probe dot was presented. When this probe dot was presented at the location of the color that had to be retrieved, participants responded faster than when it was presented at another location. Our findings further elaborate the role of visual attention in working memory: not only is attention the mechanism by which information is stored into working memory, it is also the mechanism by which information is retrieved from visual working memory.     

Bottom-up influences on working memory: behavioral and electrophysiological distraction varies with distractor strength

The present study investigates bottom-up effects serving the optimal balance between focusing attention on relevant information and distractibility by potentially significant events outside the focus of attention. We tested whether distraction, indicated by behavioral and event-related brain potential (ERP) measures, varies with the strength of task-irrelevant deviances. Twenty subjects performed a tone-duration discrimination task (200 or 400 ms sinusoidal tones presented equiprobably). The stimuli were presented with frequent standard (p = 0.84; 1000 Hz) or infrequent deviant (p = 0.16) pitch. These task-irrelevant pitch changes consisted in a frequency increase/decrease of 1%, 3%, 5%, or 10%. Each of them resulted in prolonged reaction times (RT) in the duration discrimination task and elicited the MMN, P3a, and RON components of the ERP. Importantly, these measures did increase as a function of pitch deviance. Separating the individual trials on the 1% deviation level into trials with and without RT prolongation, i.e., behavioral distraction effect, revealed that both subgroups had similar MMN, but P3a and RON were confined to the trials with RT prolongation. Results are interpreted within a model relating preattentive deviance detection, distraction, and working memory.