The Effect of Working Memory Updating on Negative Emotion Regulation and its Training Transfer Effect

Xu Sha; Suo Qianqian; He Xiaoli; Yao Zhao

doi:10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240608

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Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2024, Vol. 47 ›› Issue (6) : 1363-1372. DOI: 10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240608

General Psychology，Experimental Psychology & Ergonomics

The Effect of Working Memory Updating on Negative Emotion Regulation and its Training Transfer Effect

Xu Sha^1,2, Suo Qianqian¹, He Xiaoli¹, Yao Zhao³

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Abstract

Difficulties in emotion regulation are associated with various psychological disorders that seriously harm individuals’ health and interpersonal relationships, so it is important to explore effective methods of negative emotion regulation. In addition to cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression strategies, researchers have paid attention to the role of executive function, particularly working memory updating in emotion regulation. Some studies have shown that activating or training working memory updating can directly reduce negative emotion, while others have indicated that working memory updating decreases negative emotion by promoting cognitive reappraisal, because updating and reappraisal both involve the rapid switching of cognitive contents and the processes of replacing old information with new information. However, most studies have focused on conscious cognitive reappraisal and few studies have explored the effect of working memory updating on automatic cognitive reappraisal. Moreover, the transfer effect of working memory updating training on emotion regulation is controversial. To solve above problems, the present study used two experiments to investigate the effect of working memory updating on negative emotion regulation and its training transfer effect.
Study 1 explored the effects of working memory updating on negative emotion and the relationship between updating and conscious and automatic cognitive reappraisal. Experiment adopted a 2 (working memory updating: with, without) × 3 (cognitive reappraisal: conscious cognitive reappraisal, automatic cognitive reappraisal, none) between-subjects design. A total of 120 normal healthy undergraduate students were randomly assigned to 6 experimental conditions, 20 in each group. Five testing stages within a single experimental session: baseline, unpleasant emotions evoked task, working memory updating task, cognitive reappraisal task, and emotional regulation task. Participants’ subjective emotional experience and electrodermal activity (EDA) were collected. Study 2 examined the effect of working memory updating training on the emotion regulation ability. Another 60 normal healthy undergraduate students were recruited and assigned randomly to the working memory updating training group and the corresponding active control group. The training group received 20 days of adaptive visual n-back training programs, and the control group participated in the simple digital parity tasks for the same period. Before and after the training session, participants were asked to complete the visual n-back Task, and the conscious or automatic cognitive reappraisal emotion regulation tasks.
The results of Study 1 showed that working memory updating effectively reduced EDA but not unpleasant emotional experience. Additionally, both conscious and automatic cognitive reappraisal significantly decreased unpleasant emotional experience and EDA, with no difference. Furthermore, working memory updating improved the emotion regulation efficiency of both conscious and automatic cognitive reappraisal, and significantly reduced unpleasant emotional experience and EDA after reappraisal. The results of Study 2 showed that the training group significantly improved the correct rate of the visual n-back Task than the active control group. The decreases of unpleasant emotional experience and EDA in the conscious and automatic cognitive reappraisal working memory updating training groups during the post-test phase were significantly higher than that in the pre-test phase. The negative emotional experience decreased more in the conscious cognitive reappraisal training group, and the EDA decreased more in the automatic cognitive reappraisal training group.
In conclusion, the present study suggests that working memory updating as an implicit emotion regulation strategy could significantly reduce the physiological consequences of negative emotion. The facilitating effect of working memory updating on conscious and automatic cognitive reappraisal was demonstrated. In addition, adaptive working memory updating training produced a transfer effect and effectively improved emotion regulation ability, which has a broad application prospect. For future research, it is necessary to investigate the neurophysiological mechanism and influencing factors of working memory updating on emotion regulation, and focus on the lasting effect of training.

Key words

working memory updating / emotion regulation / cognitive reappraisal / transfer effect

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Xu Sha, Suo Qianqian, He Xiaoli, Yao Zhao. The Effect of Working Memory Updating on Negative Emotion Regulation and its Training Transfer Effect[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2024, 47(6): 1363-1372 https://doi.org/10.16719/j.cnki.1671-6981.20240608

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