Cognitive Consequences of Emotion

University Of Virginia, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Emotions are embodied registrations of value and urgency. Such registrations occur simultaneously in multiple systems, providing multiple windows on the process. The cognitive consequences of emotion provide one such window. The aim is to learn how the information from the value component of affective reactions (registrations of goodness, badness) direct thinking and other cognitive processes. Research in the prior period of support found that emotion turns on and off many of the textbook phenomena of cognitive psychology. Through collaboration with a cognitive psychologist, proposed research builds on this discovery. In behavioral experiments, we examine emotional influences on human performance on cognitive tasks involving false memories, priming, reasoning, categorization, and implicit learning. To isolate the processes involved, experiments vary moods and emotions and examine cultural influences in cross-cultural studies. A second goal is to learn how the urgency or importance of events (registered as affective reactions of arousal) govern what people remember. Through collaboration with a biological psychologist, proposed research build on research done mostly on animals, concerning how emotional events gain priority in long term memory. We will examine how emotional memories can become indelible by experiments involving emotional stimuli, mild stress tasks, and administration of memory-modulating drugs (e.g., epinephrine, propranolol). The proposed research is thus focused on the two basic components of emotional reactions - valence and arousal. The question is what role does each of these affective dimensions play in how people think and learn and what they remember. Findings to date show that thoughts tinged with affect are compelling and memorable. The proposed research takes the next step to examine the processes by which this occurs, processes that are fundamental to the guidance of everyday thought and behavior as well as to the disabling conditions of mental illness from which many Americans suffer. Understanding affective valence is essential for attacking the conditions of depression and chronic anxiety and the insistent feelings of loss and danger them painful and confusing. This research seeks to open a new window on how the arousal dimension of affect controls what people remember. It will be critical for attacking posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), because these appear to be the processes responsible for the debilitating re-experience of trauma. Such problems know no economic or social boundaries. Reducing their cost in productivity, public resources, and well-being awaits investigation of these cognitive consequences of emotion.