Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-75dct Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-09T21:52:51.531Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

When expanding training from working memory to emotional working memory: not only improving explicit emotion regulation but also implicit negative control for anxious individuals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2020

Dong-ni Pan ,
Delhii Hoid ,
Xiao-bo Wang ,
Zhuo Jia  and
Xuebing Li Open the ORCID record for Xuebing Li [Opens in a new window]
Dong-ni Pan
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10049, China
Delhii Hoid
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10049, China
Xiao-bo Wang
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10049, China
Zhuo Jia
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10049, China
Xuebing Li*
Affiliation:
Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 10049, China
*
Author for correspondence: Xuebing Li, E-mail: lixb@psych.ac.cn
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background

The effect of working memory training (WM-T) has been found to transfer to emotional wellbeing, despite some debate on whether an affective component in training is necessary to achieve specific emotion-related benefits. These novel cognitive trainings have not yet been tested in highly anxious individuals, who have deficits in implicit and explicit emotional regulation and should be the potential beneficiaries of these trainings.

Methods

We designed two types of mobile phone-based training applications: (1) WMT and (2) an emotional working memory training (EWM-T) that comprised negative face distraction. Ninety-eight participants (33, WM-T; 35, EWM-T; 30, Control group) with high trait anxiety completed the 21-day intervention or placebo program and conducted pre- and post-test procedures, including questionnaires, emotional regulation and emotional Stroop tasks alongside electroencephalogram recording. Late positive potential (LPP) in emotion regulation task and P3 in the emotional Stroop task were adopted as neutral indicators for the explicit and implicit affective regulation/control processing.

Results

Those who had received training (WM-T and EWM-T) showed enhanced explicit regulation (indexed by reduced LPP during reappraisal) compared with the control. Besides, individuals in EWM-T showed reduced behavioral attention bias and a decline of P3 in response to negative faces in an emotional Stroop task. The altered neural indicators were correlated with corresponding behavior indexes that contributed to the anxiety alleviation.

Conclusions

The general WM-T was effective in enhancing explicit emotional regulation, while training with emotional add-in further improved implicit emotional control. (E)WM-T shows potential as a beneficial intervention for the anxiety population.

Keywords

Anxietyattentional biasemotion regulationreappraisalworking memory training
Type
Original Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , March 2022 , pp. 675 - 684
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amstadter, A. (2008). Emotion regulation and anxiety disorders. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 22(2), 211–221. doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2007.02.004.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Au, J., Sheehan, E., Tsai, N., Duncan, G. J., Buschkuehl, M., & Jaeggi, S. M. (2015). Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory: A meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22(2), 366–377. doi:10.3758/s13423-014-0699-x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baddeley, A. (2003). Working memory: Looking back and looking forward. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4(10), 829–839.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bamford, S., Broyd, S. J., Benikos, N., Ward, R., Wiersema, J. R., & Sonuga-Barke, E. (2015). The late positive potential: A neural marker of the regulation of emotion-based approach-avoidance actions? Biological Psychology, 105, 115–123. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.01.009.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bar-Haim, Y. (2010). Research review: Attention bias modification (ABM): A novel treatment for anxiety disorders. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51(8), 859–870. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02251.x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bar-Haim, Y., Lamy, D., Pergamin, L., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2007). Threat-related attentional bias in anxious and nonanxious individuals: A meta-analytic study. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 1–24. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.1.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Brown, S. B. R. E., van Steenbergen, H., Band, G. P. H., de Rover, M., & Nieuwenhuis, S. (2012). Functional significance of the emotion-related late positive potential. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 33. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2012.00033..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cisler, J. M., & Olatunji, B. O. (2012). Emotion regulation and anxiety disorders. Current Psychiatry Reports, 14(3), 182–187. doi:10.1007/s11920-012-0262-2.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Comte, M., Cancel, A., Coull, J. T., Schon, D., Reynaud, E., Boukezzi, S., … Fakra, E. (2015). Effect of trait anxiety on prefrontal control mechanisms during emotional conflict. Human Brain Mapping, 36(6), 2207–2214. doi:10.1002/hbm.22765.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Ruiter, C., & Brosschot, J. F. (1994). The emotional stroop interference effect in anxiety: Attentional bias or cognitive avoidance? Behaviour Research and Therapy, 32(3), 315–319.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Drabant, E. M., Mcrae, K., Manuck, S. B., Hariri, A. R., & Gross, J. J. (2009). Individual differences in typical reappraisal use predict amygdala and prefrontal responses. Biological Psychiatry, 65(5), 367–373. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.09.007.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Etkin, A., Büchel, C., & Gross, J. J. (2015). The neural bases of emotion regulation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16(11), 693–700. doi:10.1038/nrn4044.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Etkin, A., Prater, K. E., Hoeft, F., Menon, V., & Schatzberg, A. F. (2010). Failure of anterior cingulate activation and connectivity with the amygdala during implicit regulation of emotional processing in generalized anxiety disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry, 167(5), 545–554. doi:10.1176/appi.ajp.2009.09070931.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eysenck, M. W., & Derakshan, N. (2011). New perspectives in attentional control theory. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(7), 955–960. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.08.019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gan, S. Z., Yang, J. F., Chen, X. H., Zhang, X. P., & Yang, Y. F. (2017). High working memory load impairs the effect of cognitive reappraisal on emotional response: Evidence from an event-related potential study. Neuroscience Letters, 639, 126–131. doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2016.12.069.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldin, P. R., Mcrae, K., Ramel, W., & Gross, J. J. (2008). The neural bases of emotion regulation: Reappraisal and suppression of negative emotion. Biological Psychiatry, 63(6), 577–586. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2007.05.031.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gootjes, L., Coppens, L. C., Zwaan, R. A., Franken, I. H. A., & Van Strien, J. W. (2011). Effects of recent word exposure on emotion-word stroop interference: An ERP study. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 79(3), 356–363. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2010.12.003.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gross, J. J. (2014). Emotion regulation: Conceptual and empirical foundations. In Gross, J. J. (Ed.), Handbook of emotion regulation (pp. 3–20). New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Gyurak, A., Gross, J. J., & Etkin, A. (2011). Explicit and implicit emotion regulation: A dual-process framework. Cognition & Emotion, 25(3), 400–412. doi:10.1080/02699931.2010.544160.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hajcak, G., & Nieuwenhuis, S. (2006). Reappraisal modulates the electrocortical response to unpleasant pictures. Cognitive Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience, 6(4), 291–297. doi:10.3758/Cabn.6.4.291.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hakamata, Y., Lissek, S., Bar-Haim, Y., Britton, J. C., Fox, N. A., Leibenluft, E., … Pine, D. S. (2010). Attention bias modification treatment: A meta-analysis toward the establishment of novel treatment for anxiety. Biological Psychiatry, 68(11), 982–990. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.07.021.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hofmann, S. G., Heering, S., Sawyer, A. T., & Asnaani, A. (2009). How to handle anxiety: The effects of reappraisal, acceptance, and suppression strategies on anxious arousal. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 47(5), 389–394. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2009.02.010.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jaeggi, S. M., Buschkuehl, M., Jonides, J., & Perrig, W. J. (2008). Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(19), 6829–6833. doi:10.1073/pnas.0801268105.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klingberg, T., Forssberg, H., & Westerberg, H. (2002). Training of working memory in children with ADHD. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 24(6), 781–791. doi:10.1076/jcen.24.6.781.8395.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
MacLeod, C., Mathews, A., & Tata, P. (1986). Attentional bias in emotional disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(1), 15–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Melbylervåg, M., & Hulme, C. (2013). Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review. Developmental Psychology, 49(2), 270–291.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Metzger, L. J., Orr, S. P., Lasko, N. B., McNally, R. J., & Pitman, R. K. (1997). Seeking the source of emotional stroop interference effects in PTSD: A study of P3s to traumatic words. Integrative Physiological and Behavioral Science, 32(1), 43–51. doi:10.1007/Bf02688612.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moser, J. S., Hajcak, G., Bukay, E., & Simons, R. F. (2006). Intentional modulation of emotional responding to unpleasant pictures: An ERP study. Psychophysiology, 43(3), 292–296. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2006.00402.x.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Onraedt, T., & Koster, E. H. (2014). Training working memory to reduce rumination. PLoS One, 9(3), e90632. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0090632.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pan, D. N., Wang, Y., Lei, Z., Wang, Y., & Li, X. (2020). The altered early components and the decisive later process underlying attention bias modification in social anxiety: Evidence from event-related potentials. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 14(12), 1307–1316. doi:10.1093/scan/nsz098.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pan, D. N., Wang, Y., & Li, X. B. (2019). Strategy bias in the emotion regulation of high trait anxiety individuals: An investigation of underlying neural signatures using ERPs. Neuropsychology, 33(1), 111–122. doi:10.1037/neu0000471CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pe, M. L., Raes, F., & Kuppens, P. (2013). The cognitive building blocks of emotion regulation: Ability to update working memory moderates the efficacy of rumination and reappraisal on emotion. PLoS One, 8(7). e69071. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069071.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pishyar, R., Harris, L. M., & Menzies, R. G. (2004). Attentional bias for words and faces in social anxiety. Anxiety Stress and Coping, 17(1), 23–36. doi:10.1080/10615800310001601458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollmann, S. (2012). Anterior prefrontal contributions to implicit attention control. Brain Sciences, 2(2), 254–266. doi:10.3390/brainsci2020254.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reinholt, N., & Krogh, J. (2014). Efficacy of transdiagnostic cognitive behaviour therapy for anxiety disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis of published outcome studies. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 43(3), 171–184. doi:10.1080/16506073.2014.897367.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sari, B. A., Koster, E. H., Pourtois, G., & Derakshan, N. (2016). Training working memory to improve attentional control in anxiety: A proof-of-principle study using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. Biological Psychology, 121(Pt B), 203–212. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.09.008.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schmeichel, B. J., Volokhov, R. N., & Dernaree, H. A. (2008). Working memory capacity and the self-regulation of emotional expression and experience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(6), 1526–1540. doi:10.1037/a0013345.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schönfelder, S., Kanske, P., Heissler, J., & Wessa, M. (2014). Time course of emotion-related responding during distraction and reappraisal. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9, 1310–1319. doi:10.1093/scan/nst116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schweizer, S., Grahn, J., Hampshire, A., Mobbs, D., & Dalgleish, T. (2013). Training the emotional brain: Improving affective control through emotional working memory training. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(12), 5301–5311. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2593-12.2013.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schweizer, S., Hampshire, A., & Dalgleish, T. (2011). Extending brain-training to the affective domain: Increasing cognitive and affective executive control through emotional working memory training. PLoS One, 6(9), e24372. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schweizer, S., Samimi, Z., Hasani, J., Moradi, A., Mirdoraghi, F., & Khaleghi, M. (2017). Improving cognitive control in adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Behaviour Research and Therapy, 93, 88–94. doi:10.1016/j.brat.2017.03.017.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shek, D. T. (1993). The Chinese version of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory: Its relationship to different measures of psychological well-being. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 49(3), 349–358.3.0.CO;2-J>CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spielberger, C.D. (1983). Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press.Google Scholar
Takeuchi, H., Taki, Y., Rui, N., Hashizume, H., Sekiguchi, A., Kotozaki, Y., … Kawashima, R. (2013). Working memory training improves emotional states of healthy individuals. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 8(64), 200. doi:10.3389/fnsys.2014.00200.Google Scholar
Thiruchselvam, R., Blechert, J., Sheppes, G., Rydstrom, A., & Gross, J. J. (2011). The temporal dynamics of emotion regulation: An EEG study of distraction and reappraisal. Biological Psychology, 87(1), 84–92. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.02.009.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thomas, S. J., Johnstone, S. J., & Gonsalvez, C. J. (2007). Event-related potentials during an emotional stroop task. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 63(3), 221–231. doi:10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2006.10.002.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
von Bastian, C. C., & Oberauer, K. (2014). Effects and mechanisms of working memory training: A review. Psychological Research-Psychologische Forschung, 78(6), 803–820. doi:10.1007/s00426-013-0524-6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Voogd, E. L. D., Wiers, R. W., Zwitser, R. J., & Salemink, E. (2016). Emotional working memory training as an online intervention for adolescent anxiety and depression: A randomised controlled trial. Australian Journal of Psychology, 68(3), 228. doi:10.1111/ajpy.12134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wanmaker, S., Geraerts, E., & Franken, I. H. A. (2015). A working memory training to decrease rumination in depressed and anxious individuals: A double-blind randomized controlled trial. Journal of Affective Disorders, 175C, 310–319. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2014.12.027.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, D., & Clark, L. A. (1994). Introduction to the special issue on personality and psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 103(1), 3–5. doi:10.1037/h0092429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, J. M. G., Mathews, A., & MacLeod, C. (1996). The emotional stroop task and psychopathology. Psychological Bulletin, 120(1), 3–24. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.120.1.3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xiu, L. C., Wu, J., Chang, L., & Zhou, R. L. (2018). Working memory training improves emotion regulation ability. Scientific Reports, 8(1). doi:10.1038/s41598-018-31495-2..CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xiu, L., Zhou, R., & Jiang, Y. (2016). Working memory training improves emotion regulation ability: Evidence from HRV. Physiology & Behavior, 155(6), 25–29.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zhang, W., Ding, Q., Chen, N., Wei, Q., Zhao, C., Zhang, P., … Li, H. (2016). The development of automatic emotion regulation in an implicit emotional Go/NoGo paradigm and the association with depressive symptoms and anhedonia during adolescence. NeuroImage: Clinical, 11, 116–123. doi:10.1016/j.nicl.2016.01.018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, W., & Lu, J. (2012). Time course of automatic emotion regulation during a facial Go/Nogo task. Biological Psychology, 89(2), 444–449. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.12.011.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: File

Pan et al. supplementary material

Pan et al. supplementary material

Download Pan et al. supplementary material(File)
File 732.1 KB