Abstract
Lindström, B. R. & Bohlin, G. (2011) Emotion processing facilitates working memory performance. Cognition and Emotion 25(7), 1196-1204
The effect of emotional stimulus content on working memory performance has been investigated
with conflicting results, as both emotion-dependent facilitation and impairments are reported in the
literature. To clarify this issue, 52 adult participants performed a modified visual 2-back task with
highly arousing positive stimuli (sexual scenes), highly arousing negative stimuli (violent death) and
low-arousal neutral stimuli. Emotional stimulus processing was found to facilitate task performance
relative to that of neutral stimuli, both in regards to response accuracy and reaction times. No
emotion-dependent differences in false-alarm rates were found. These results indicate that emotional
information can have a facilitating effect on working memory maintenance and processing of information.