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Project

Updating affective information in working memory: its nature, determinants, and consequences.

Whatever is on your mind clearly plays an important role in how you feel. Likewise, the processes that determine what is on or off your mind play a critical role in changing how you feel. Research demonstrates that affective updating ability, a cognitive process that is at least in part responsible for changing or modifying emotional thoughts, may play a key role in maintaining and changing how we feel. Indeed, it has been shown that individuals with difficulties in affective updating continued to experience negative emotions even when they were trying to actively change how they felt. Additionally, individuals with clinical depression, a mood disorder characterized by sustained negative emotions, showed difficulties in affective updating. Given the central role of affective updating ability in emotional functioning, this research proposal is focused on gaining a better understanding of this cognitive ability, with the view that new knowledge will help individuals with emotional difficulties. We plan to achieve this goal by examining (1) the nature of affective updating ability, (2) the factors that may increase or decrease affective updating ability, (3) how emotional change is a function of affective updating, and (4) how these relations play out in daily life.

Date:1 Oct 2015 →  30 Sep 2016
Keywords:Affective updating, working memory, cognitive control, emotional change, emotional functioning