Research traditions on cognition and depression focus on relatively unconnected aspects of cognitive functioning. On one hand, the neuropsychological perspective has concentrated on cognitive control difficulties as a prominent feature of this condition. On the other hand, the clinical psychology perspective has focused on cognitive biases and repetitive negative patterns of thinking for emotional information. A review of the literature from both fields reveals that difficulties are more evident for mood-congruent materials, suggesting that cognitive control difficulties interact with cognitive biases (...) to hinder cognitive switching, working memory updating, and inhibition of irrelevant information. Connecting research from these two traditions, we propose a novel integrative cognitive model of depression in which the interplay between mood-congruent cognitive control difficulties, cognitive biases, and rumination may ultimately lead to ineffective emotion-regulation strategies to downregulate negative mood and upregulate positive mood. (shrink)

Deception scholars have argued that increasing the liar’s cognitive system artificially can produce deception cues. However, if too much load is imposed the truth tellers’ performance can also be impaired. To address this issue, we designed a veracity task that incorporated a secondary task to increase cognitive load gradually. Also, because deception has been associated with activity in the inferior frontal cortex (IFC), we examined the influence of transcranial direct current stimulation of the IFC on performance. During stimulation, participants truthfully (...) or deceptively indicated whether each of a number of statements shown on screen was true or not. Higher load decreased recall but not general compliance or response times (RTs). Truthful trials yielded higher compliance rates and faster RTs than deceptive trials except for the highest load level. Anodal right stimulation decreased compliance in truthful trials when participants were not overloaded. Truth telling was more vulnerable to cognitive load and tDCS than lying. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEmotion regulation comprises attempts to influence when and how emotions are experienced and expressed. It has mostly been conceived of as proactive or reactive, but it may also be retroactive and involve memory. I term such past-oriented activity mnemonic emotion regulation and propose that it involves increasing or decreasing access to or altering the characteristics of a memory. People may increase access to a memory and make it more likely that it will be retrieved in the future, for example by (...) rehearsing a pleasant memory. They may decrease access to a memory and make it less likely that intrusions will be experienced in the future, for example by repeatedly trying to stop an unpleasant memory from being retrieved. Finally, people may alter the characteristics of a memory and change its content or context, for example by replacing a negative impression with a productive interpretation. I discuss how mnemonic emotion regulation may be i... (shrink)

Episodic memory has been analyzed in a number of different ways in both philosophy and psychology, and most controversy has centered on its self-referential,autonoeticcharacter. Here, we offer a comprehensive characterization of episodic memory in representational terms and propose a novel functional account on this basis. We argue that episodic memory should be understood as a distinctive epistemic attitude taken toward an event simulation. In this view, episodic memory has a metarepresentational format and should not be equated with beliefs about the (...) past. Instead, empirical findings suggest that the contents of human episodic memory are often constructed in the service of the explicit justification of such beliefs. Existing accounts of episodic memory function that have focused on explaining its constructive character through its role in future-oriented mental time travel do justice neither to its capacity to ground veridical beliefs about the past nor to its representational format. We provide an account of the metarepresentational structure of episodic memory in terms of its role in communicative interaction. The generative nature of recollection allows us to represent and communicate the reasons why we hold certain beliefs about the past. In this process, autonoesis corresponds to the capacity to determine when and how to assert epistemic authority in making claims about the past. A domain where such claims are indispensable are human social engagements. Such engagements commonly require the justification of entitlements and obligations, which is often possible only by explicit reference to specific past events. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that the proactive deprioritization of emotional distractors through the provision of information about the distractors or passive habituation of emotional distractors may attenuate emotion-induced blindness (EIB) in the rapid serial visual presentation stream. However, whether prior memory encoding of emotional distractors could bias the EIB effect remains unknown. To address this question, this study employed a three-phase paradigm integrating an item-method direct forgetting (DF) procedure with a classic EIB procedure. Participants completed a memory coding phase to (...) either remember or forget negative pictures, then performed an intermediate phase of the EIB test, and finally finished a recognition test. Critically, the same to-be-forgotten (TBF) and to-be-remembered (TBR) negative pictures in the memory learning phase were used as emotional distractors in the intermediate EIB test. The results replicated the typical DF effect by showing higher recognition accuracies for TBR pictures compared to those for TBF pictures. More importantly, the TBF negative distractors attenuated the EIB effect compared to the TBR negative distractors, but showed a comparable EIB effect as the novel negative distractors. These findings indicate that prior memory encoding manipulations of negative distractors could bias subsequent EIB effects, providing an important approach to modulate the EIB effect. (shrink)

We studied retrieval-induced forgetting for past or future autobiographical experiences. In the study phase, participants were given cues to remember past autobiographical experiences or to think about experiences that may occur in the future. In both conditions, half of the experiences were positive and half negative. In the retrieval-practice phase, for past and future experiences, participants retrieved either half of the positive or negative experiences using cued recall, or capitals of the world. Retrieval practice produced recall facilitation and enhanced memory (...) for the practised positive and negative past and future experiences. While retrieval practice on positive experiences did not impair the recall of other positive experiences, we found inhibition for negative past and future experiences when participants practised negative experiences. Furthermore, retrieval practice on positive future experiences inhibited negative future experiences. These positivity biases for autobiographical memory may have practical implications for treatment of emotional disorders. (shrink)

Remembering and forgetting are the two poles of the memory system. Consequently, any approach to memory should be able to explain both remembering and forgetting in order to gain a comprehensive and insightful understanding of the memory system. Can an enactive approach to memory processes do so? In this article I propose a possible way to provide a positive answer to this question. In line with some current enactive approaches to memory, I suggest that forgetting –similarly to remembering– might be (...) constituted within an embodied and active process. Within this process, some simulation and re-enactment paths would acquire more relevance than others. This acquired relevance would make the activation of other paths of recall less likely, thus preventing the memory system from engaging in some episodic simulations. These changes in the likelihood of activation of some paths of recall –the forgotten ones– can be accounted for in an enactive fashion by studying both “internal” and “external” re-enactment and simulation paths. With regard to the latter, I propose to examine the process of forgetting by considering the engagement and affective relation of an embodied agent with her field of affordances. I suggest that, in the case of emotion-laden memories, the agent’s decoupling from some affordances of the environment might contribute to the process of forgetting, in that it would reduce the agent’s opportunities for situated episodic simulations. (shrink)