RT Journal Article
T1 Emotional interference-based forgetting in short-term memory. Cognitive inhibition of pleasant but not unpleasant biologically relevant distractors
A1 Pacios García, Javier
A1 Del Río Grande, David Pedro
A1 Villalobos Tornero, María Dolores
A1 Ruiz-Vargas Jose María, 
A1 Maestu Unturbe, Fernando
AB Emotional stimuli automatically recruit attentional resources. Although this usually brings more adaptive responses, it may suppose a disadvantage when emotional information is task-irrelevant and should be ignored. Previous studies have shown how emotional stimuli with a negative content exert a greater interference than neutral stimuli during a concurrent working memory (WM) task. However, the impact of positively valenced stimuli as interference has not been addressed to date. In three experiments and one re-analysis we explore the impact of pleasant and unpleasant emotional distractors during WM maintenance. The results suggest that our cognitive control can cope with the interference posed by pleasant distractors as well as with the interference posed by neutral stimuli. However, unpleasant distractors are harder to control in the context of WM maintenance. As unpleasant stimuli usually convey relevant information that we should not to ignore, our executive control seems to be less able to reallocate cognitive resources after unpleasant distraction.
PB Frontiers
SN 1664-1078
YR 2015
FD 2015
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/93941
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/93941
LA eng
NO García-Pacios, Javier, et al. «Emotional interference-based forgetting in short-term memory. Cognitive inhibition of pleasant but not unpleasant biologically relevant distractors». Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 6, mayo de 2015.  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00582.
DS Docta Complutense
RD 16 abr 2025