Browsing by Author "Geyer,T."

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Citation Count: 9
Affective modulation of working memory maintenance: The role of positive and negative emotions
(University of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw, 2021) Gökçe, Ahu; Zinchenko,A.; Annac,E.; Conci,M.; Geyer,T.
The present study investigated the impact of task-irrelevant emotional images on the retention of information in spatial working memory (WM). Two experiments employed a delayed matching-to-sample task where participants had to maintain the locations of four briefly presented squares. After a short retention interval, a probe item appeared and participants were required to indicate whether the probe position matched one of the previously occupied square positions. During the retention interval, task-irrelevant negative, positive, or neutral emotional pictures were presented. The results revealed a dissociation between negative and positive affect on the participants’ ability to hold spatial locations in WM. While negative affective pictures reduced WM capacity, positive pictures increased WM capacity relative to the neutral images. Moreover, the specific valence and arousal of a given emotional picture was also related to WM performance: While higher valence enhanced WM capacity, higher levels of arousal in turn reduced WM capacity. Together, our findings suggest that emotions up- or down-regulate attention to items in WM and thus modulate the short-term storage of visual information in memory. © 2021 University of Finance and Management in Warsaw. All rights reserved.
Citation Count: 11
Positional priming of visual pop-out search is supported by multiple spatial reference frames
(Frontiers Media S.A., 2015) Gökçe, Ahu; Müller,H.J.; Geyer,T.
The present study investigates the representations(s) underlying positional priming of visual ‘pop-out’ search (Maljkovic and Nakayama, 1996). Three search items (one target and two distractors) were presented at different locations, in invariant (Experiment 1) or random (Experiment 2) cross-trial sequences. By these manipulations it was possible to disentangle retinotopic, spatiotopic, and object-centered priming representations. Two forms of priming were tested: target location facilitation (i.e., faster reaction times – RTs– when the trial n target is presented at a trial n-1 target relative to n-1 blank location) and distractor location inhibition (i.e., slower RTs for n targets presented at n-1 distractor compared to n-1 blank locations). It was found that target locations were coded in positional short-term memory with reference to both spatiotopic and object-centered representations (Experiment 1 vs. 2). In contrast, distractor locations were maintained in an object-centered reference frame (Experiments 1 and 2). We put forward the idea that the uncertainty induced by the experiment manipulation (predictable versus random cross-trial item displacements) modulates the transition from object- to space-based representations in cross-trial memory for target positions. © Copyright © 2015 Gokce, Müller and Geyer.