Developmental cognitive mechanism and neural basis of procrastination

Abstract. In the study, the neural basis of emotional reactivity was investigated. Reactivity was operationalized as the impact of emotional pictures on the self-reported ongoing affective state. It was used to divide the subjects into high- and low-responders groups. Independent sources of brain activity were identified, localized with the DIPFIT method, and clustered across subjects to analyse the visual evoked potentials to affective pictures. Four of the identified clusters revealed effects of reactivity. The earliest two started about 120 ms from the stimulus onset and were located in the occipital lobe and the right temporoparietal junction. Another two with a latency of 200 ms were found in the orbitofrontal and the right dorsolateral cortices. Additionally, differences in pre-stimulus alpha level over the visual cortex were observed between the groups. The attentional modulation of perceptual processes is proposed as an early source of emotional reactivity, which forms an automatic mechanism of affective control. The role of top-down processes in affective appraisal and, finally, the experience of ongoing emotional states is also discussed.

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Cognitive Load Mediates the Effect of Emotion on Analytical Thinking

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000333 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 63 (6) ◽

pp. 343-350 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Bastien Trémolière ◽

Marie-Ève Gagnon ◽

Isabelle Blanchette

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Load ◽

Secondary Task ◽

Deleterious Effect ◽

Detrimental Effect ◽

Emotional Problems ◽

Syllogistic Reasoning ◽

Cognitive Resources ◽

Potential Explanation ◽

Cognitive Mechanism ◽

Analytical Thinking

Abstract. Although the detrimental effect of emotion on reasoning has been evidenced many times, the cognitive mechanism underlying this effect remains unclear. In the present paper, we explore the cognitive load hypothesis as a potential explanation. In an experiment, participants solved syllogistic reasoning problems with either neutral or emotional contents. Participants were also presented with a secondary task, for which the difficult version requires the mobilization of cognitive resources to be correctly solved. Participants performed overall worse and took longer on emotional problems than on neutral problems. Performance on the secondary task, in the difficult version, was poorer when participants were reasoning about emotional, compared to neutral contents, consistent with the idea that processing emotion requires more cognitive resources. Taken together, the findings afford evidence that the deleterious effect of emotion on reasoning is mediated by cognitive load.

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