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The Effects of Negative Facial Expression on Visual and Spatial Recognition Task

  • 인문논총
  • 2023, 62(), pp.33-56
  • DOI : 10.33638/JHS.62.2
  • Publisher : Institute for Human studies, Kyungnam University
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : August 9, 2023
  • Accepted : September 30, 2023
  • Published : October 31, 2023

SEON-KYOUNG LEE 1 Lee, Yoonhyoung 2

1한국뇌연구원 인지과학연구그룹
2영남대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The current study investigates the impact of task-irrelevant negative facial expression stimuli on performance in tasks requiring the maintenance and recognition of visual or spatial information. Previous research has shown that task-irrelevant negative scene stimuli affect spatial memory but not visual memory. To further explore these findings, our study expands on them by examining the effects of facial expression stimuli. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to remember location stimuli, while in Experiment 2, they were asked to remember shape stimuli. Throughout both experiments, negative and neutral facial expressions were presented while participants held the stimuli in memory. Interestingly, our results reveal that negative facial expressions enhance performance compared to neutral in a spatial memory task (in Experiment 1), but there was no significant difference in a visual memory task (in Experiment 2). These findings suggest that both negative emotions evoked by scene stimuli and facial expressions engage spatial attentional resources. However, the specific processing mechanisms may differ depending on the type of stimulus. Moreover, the results indicate that visual and spatial information might be processed independently in working memory.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.