TY  - JOUR
A1  - Wirkner, Janine
A1  - Ventura-Bort, Carlos
A1  - Schwabe, Lars
A1  - Hamm, Alfons O.
A1  - Weymar, Mathias
T1  - Chronic stress and emotion: Differential effects on attentional processing and recognition memory
JF  - Psychoneuroendocrinology
N2  - Previous research indicates that acute stress around the time of learning facilitates attention and memory for emotionally salient information. Despite accumulating evidence for these acute stress effects, less is known about the role of chronic stress. In the present study, we therefore tested emotional and neutral scene processing and later recognition memory in female participants using hair cortisol concentrations as a biological marker for chronic stress. Event-related potentials recorded during picture viewing indicated enhanced late positive potentials (LPPs) for emotional, relative to neutral contents. These brain potentials varied as a function of long-term hair cortisol levels: hair-cortisol levels were positively related to overall LPP amplitudes. Results from recognition memory testing one week after encoding revealed better memory for emotional relative to neutral scenes. Hair-cortisol levels, however, were related to poorer memory accuracy. Taken together, our results indicate that chronic stress enhanced attentional processing during encoding of new stimuli and impaired later recognition memory. Results are discussed with regard to putatively opposite effects of chronic stress on certain brain regions (e.g., amygdala and hippocampus).
KW  - Chronic stress
KW  - Emotion
KW  - Event-related potential
KW  - Late positive potential
KW  - Memory
KW  - Hair cortisol
Y1  - 2019
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2019.05.008
SN  - 0306-4530
VL  - 107
SP  - 93
EP  - 97
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lange, Elke B.
A1  - Starzynski, Christian
A1  - Engbert, Ralf
T1  - Capture of the gaze does not capture the mind
JF  - Attention, perception, & psychophysics : AP&P ; a journal of the Psychonomic Society, Inc.
N2  - Sudden visual changes attract our gaze, and related eye movement control requires attentional resources. Attention is a limited resource that is also involved in working memory-for instance, memory encoding. As a consequence, theory suggests that gaze capture could impair the buildup of memory respresentations due to an attentional resource bottleneck. Here we developed an experimental design combining a serial memory task (verbal or spatial) and concurrent gaze capture by a distractor (of high or low similarity to the relevant item). The results cannot be explained by a general resource bottleneck. Specifically, we observed that capture by the low-similar distractor resulted in delayed and reduced saccade rates to relevant items in both memory tasks. However, while spatial memory performance decreased, verbal memory remained unaffected. In contrast, the high-similar distractor led to capture and memory loss for both tasks. Our results lend support to the view that gaze capture leads to activation of irrelevant representations in working memory that compete for selection at recall. Activation of irrelevant spatial representations distracts spatial recall, whereas activation of irrelevant verbal features impairs verbal memory performance.
KW  - Attention
KW  - Memory
KW  - Cognitive eye movements
KW  - Visual working memory
KW  - Short-term memory
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-012-0318-8
SN  - 1943-3921
VL  - 74
IS  - 6
SP  - 1168
EP  - 1182
PB  - Springer
CY  - New York
ER  -