Ongoing Research

Brief Background

Working memory (WM) refers to the ability to maintain and manipulate a small amount of information in mind for brief periods (Baddeley, 1992), and affective working memory (AWM) refers to maintaining and working with a feeling state in mind (Mikels & Reuter-Lorenz, 2019). 

Recent Work 

It is well established that cognitive working memory (WM) abilities tend to decline as we age. Previous research suggests that working memory ability for emotion (i.e., affective working memory (AWM)) may be resilient to age-related declines (Mikels et al., 2005). We aim to understand these diverging trajectories in memory performance across the lifespan. A prior project was pre-registered via OSF and involved recruiting 200+ participants aged 20-79 via Prolific. Our results were intriguing, as we found that AWM was preserved with age, but paradoxically, so was cognitive WM. These results require further investigation and replication with a more diverse, in-person sample. 

Current Work

Using an emotion maintenance task to measure AWM, Waugh et al. (2019) demonstrated that accuracy was poorer when maintaining negative emotions, especially in 1>2 trials (i.e., image 1 was judged to be more intense than image 2). In an effort to replicate this result, our lab has re-analyzed data from previous studies of AWM and non-affective WM, including positive, negative, and neutral images (Frank et al., 2021; 2023) in the form of a meta-analysis. In addition, we conducted a novel study to investigate the effects of intensity order and valence further. We found a negativity bias, such that our young adult samples had higher accuracy in the negatively valenced trials. In addition, we found a valence by intensity order interaction in the direction of superior negative 2>1 accuracy in the new study. Therefore, based on our lab results alone, we believe that negative emotions are easier to maintain than positive ones in a young adult sample. This manuscript is in preparation (Sarver et al., in prep).

The role of AWM in supporting higher-order emotional abilities, including affective forecasting (AF; our ability to predict how we will feel in the future), has been well-established. Research has shown that AWM, but not non-affective WM ability, predicts AF in younger adult samples. However, age-related differences in AF have yet to be explored. Given the evidence suggesting that AWM is relatively preserved with age (Mikels et al., 2005), we examined the relationship of AWM and AF in older adults and considered intensity order effects. Data analysis is currently in progress; results to come.

I am currently leading the writing of a methodological chapter that provides a comprehensive guide to measuring AWM. This chapter introduces the conceptual foundations of AWM, outlines the specific protocol for studying it, and includes a broader discussion of its applications. This project reflects my commitment to developing rigorous, transparent, and reproducible approaches for studying cognition and emotion across adulthood.

Check out other ongoing research on the Cognitive and Affective Neuropsychology Lab website and the page on Publications & Presentations for additional information.