The current investigation examined the bidirectional effects of cognitive control and emotional control and the overlap between these two systems in regulating emotions. Based on recent neural and cognitive findings, we hypothesised that two control systems largely overlap as control recruited for one system (either emotional or cognitive) can be used by the other system. In two experiments, participants completed novel versions of either the Stroop task (Experiment 1) or the Flanker task (Experiment 2) in which the emotional and cognitive (...) control systems were actively manipulated into either a high or low emotional-load condition (achieved by varying the proportions of negative-valence emotional cues) and a high and a low cognitive control condition (achieved through varying the proportion of conflict-laden trials). In both experiments, participants’ performance was impaired when both emotional and cognitive control were low, but significantly and similarly improved when one of the two control mechanisms were activated – the emotional or the cognitive. In Experiment 2, performance was further improved when both systems were activated. Our results give further support for a more integrative notion of control in which the two systems (emotional and cognitive control) not only influence each other, but rather extensively overlap. (shrink)

Substantial research indicates that individuals with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) remember more negative information compared to neutral and positive information. This phenomenon is commonly attributed to attentional biases toward negative over neutral and positive information. A recent attentional resources model suggests that in MDD, negative cues not only capture attention, but also lead to deeper processing of subsequent information, irrespective of its content. This study aimed to replicate findings supporting this attentional resources model and go beyond it by investigating the (...) effect of negative cues on encoding and retrieval processes. Forty-one participants with MDD and no comorbid diagnoses, and 42 healthy-controls completed the emotional recall task with negative or positive videos presented during encoding and retrieval stages of a neutral word-list memory test. During encoding, only the MDD group exhibited a difference between negative and positive videos, such that for negative videos memory recall was improved and for positive words it was reduced. Emotional videos had no effect when presented during retrieval. These results suggest that in MDD, encountering emotional cues not only biases retrieval processes toward recalling more negative content, but rather fundamentally alters the depth of information processing, while not leading to a broad-spectrum recruitment of cognitive resources. (shrink)