Curvilinear relationship between phonological working memory load and social-emotional modulation

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Human-Computer Interaction

Background:

• Working memory (WM) plays a crucial role in integrating cognitive and facial-affective processing.
• The interaction between WM load and distraction from facial stimuli remains incompletely understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how task-irrelevant facial distracters affect performance across varying working memory loads.
• To determine if facial valence modulates distraction effects under different WM load conditions.

Main Methods:

• A modified delayed match-to-sample task was employed, presenting pseudoword memoranda of increasing load (1-3 syllables).
• Task-irrelevant facial distracters (happy, sad, neutral; happy, fearful, neutral) were introduced during the rehearsal phase.
• Performance was assessed across different WM load conditions in two experiments (N=60, N=29).

Main Results:

• Facial distracters significantly impaired performance specifically at the intermediate WM load (2-syllable condition).
• This disruption occurred irrespective of facial expression valence, indicating a general distraction effect.
• A secondary valence effect emerged, with sad and fearful faces being less disruptive than happy faces.

Conclusions:

• Working memory exhibits heightened vulnerability to social-emotional facial information at intermediate load levels.
• Low loads accommodate distraction due to spare capacity, while high loads saturate WM, preventing interference.
• The findings highlight a critical intermediate load threshold where cognitive processing is most susceptible to social-emotional distraction.