The binding of negative emotional stimuli with spatial information in working memory: A possible role for the episodic buffer

IntroductionRemembering where negative events occur has undeniable adaptive value, however, how these memories are formed remains elusive. We investigated the role of working memory subcomponents in binding emotional and visuo-spatial information using an emotional version of the object relocation task (EORT). MethodsAfter displaying black rectangles simultaneously, emotional pictures (from the International Affective Pictures System) appeared sequentially over each rectangle. Participants repositioned the rectangles as accurately as possible after all stimuli had disappeared. During the EORT encoding phase, a verbal trail task was administered concurrently to selectively interfere with the central executive (CE). The immediate post-encoding administration of an object feature-report task was used to interfere with the episodic buffer (EB). ResultsOnly the EB-interfering task prevented the emotion-enhancing effect of negative pictures. The latter effect was not observed with a concurrent executive task. DiscussionOverall, our findings suggest that pre-attentive automatic processes are primarily involved in binding emotional and visuo-spatial information in the EB.

Automated summary

This study investigated the role of working memory subcomponents in binding emotional and visuo-spatial information using the emotional object relocation task (EORT). The results showed that only a task that interfered with the episodic buffer (EB) prevented the emotion-enhancing effect of negative pictures, while this effect was not observed with a concurrent executive task. These findings suggest that pre-attentive automatic processes are primarily involved in the binding of emotional and visuo-spatial information in the EB.