Emotional states affect the retention of biological motion in working memory

Retaining biological motion (BM), or the movements of animate entities, in working memory (WM) is critical to human social life. Moreover, as functioning members of society, we always process BM in a specific emotional state. However, no WM study to date has explored the influence of emotional state on processing BM in WM. As a first step, the current study examined the influence of emotional state on WM capacity for BM. We first induced a specific (positive, negative, or neutral) emotional state and then asked the participants to complete a WM task measuring WM capacity for BM. In Experiment 1, we found that a negative emotional state impaired WM capacity for BM relative to neutral and positive emotional states, with no difference between the latter 2. Experiment 2, adopting μ and α suppression as electroencephalogram (EEG) indices, further confirmed that a negative emotional state reduced the number of BM stimuli retained in WM. Overall, the current study suggests that a negative emotional state has a considerably negative effect on WM capacity for BM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).