Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to examine how arousal of task-irrelevant negative emotions affect spatial and visual working memory, and furthermore, whether the effects of negative emotions can be regulated. To do so, Participants were repeatedly presented with three high-arousal or low-arousal negative distractors while performing a spatial (Study 1) or visual working memory task (Study 2). The results showed that low-arousal negative emotions did not affect performance on the spatial working memory task, but repeated exposure to high-arousal negative distractors interfered with performance on the spatial working memory task. To further examine the affective habituation effect over time, we split the trials in half, and found that the interference effect remained intact for accuracy, but disappeared in the later trials for reaction time. These results suggest that affective habituation from repeated exposure may have different effects on accuracy and reaction time. In contrast, visual working memory performance was unaffected by negative distractors. These results support the claim that the interference is due to the high arousal caused by negative emotion and show that the interference effect is not easily modulated by repeated exposure to high-arousal stimuli. Furthermore, by showing different effect of emotion on visual and spatial working memory, this study suggests that visual and spatial working memory are distinct.