Some long-term effects of emotion on cognition

This study explored the long-term effects of emotion on cognition and over a 12-day period. Two divergent tasks were employed: a word association task and a visual learning task. Over the initial 4 days of the study, participants went through a mood-induction procedure then subsequently completed both tasks. Both tasks showed a reduction in reaction time consistent with the power law of learning across the first 4 consecutive days, and there was no significant change in reaction time between day 4 and day 5 (1 week later), suggesting that the change in reaction time was robust. The slopes of the power curves are discussed in relation to attentional and mnemonic systems that may underlie the observed differences in the exponents of the power curves by emotion group.