The effects of affect: Working memory, rumination and emotion reactivity - Insights from an affective n-back task
4 affiliations
- 1Department of Medical and Biological Psychology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
- 2Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
- 3Department of Clinical Sciences Lund, Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
- 4Department of Psychiatry, Skåne University Hospital, Lund, Sweden.
Abstract
Objective: Internalizing disorders are associated with emotion regulation characterized by repetitive negative thinking. There is a proposed relationship between rumination and working memory and there are gaps in understanding how emotions impact this association. In the present study, we investigated differences in negative (hot) and neutral (cold) working memory processing in relation to measures of rumination and emotion reactivity. Our aim was to address hot working memory as a potential clinically relevant mechanism in challenges with emotion regulation. Emotion reactivity was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between rumination and working memory. Method: Participants were undergraduate students (N = 120). Working memory was assessed using the Memory Affective Flexibility Task (MAFT), an affective experimental paradigm based on the n-back task that incorporates neutral and valenced visual stimuli. Facets of maladaptive emotion regulation were measured through self-report questionnaires for rumination and emotion reactivity. Associations were examined using multiple linear regression with rumination as the outcome variable. Results: There were small relationships between working memory performance in both neutral and negative conditions of the MAFT with measures of rumination and emotion reactivity. There was a significant moderate correlation between emotion reactivity and rumination. Conclusion: Despite correlations among self-report measures of emotion reactivity and rumination, we observed limited support for the links of task-based hot or cold working memory performance with self-rated emotion measures. This aligns with previous reports of modest correlations between task-based and self-report measures. The findings add to a growing literature on the challenges of capturing the interplay between emotion processes, affect and cognition in neuroscientific research.
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BibTeX
@article{skram2026effects,
title = {{The effects of affect: Working memory, rumination and emotion reactivity - Insights from an affective n-back task}},
author = {Nanna Karen Gilberg Skram and Constance Gaard Storvestre and Eivind Haga Ronold and Sheri L Johnson and Matthew V Elliott and Kenneth J D Allen and Åsa Hammar},
journal = {PLOS One},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0360749},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360749},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - The effects of affect: Working memory, rumination and emotion reactivity - Insights from an affective n-back task
AU - Nanna Karen Gilberg Skram
AU - Constance Gaard Storvestre
AU - Eivind Haga Ronold
AU - Sheri L Johnson
AU - Matthew V Elliott
AU - Kenneth J D Allen
AU - Åsa Hammar
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
JO - PLOS One
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0360749
UR - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360749
AB - Objective: Internalizing disorders are associated with emotion regulation characterized by repetitive negative thinking. There is a proposed relationship between rumination and working memory and there are gaps in understanding how emotions impact this association. In the present study, we investigated differences in negative (hot) and neutral (cold) working memory processing in relation to measures of rumination and emotion reactivity. Our aim was to address hot working memory as a potential clinically relevant mechanism in challenges with emotion regulation. Emotion reactivity was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between rumination and working memory. Method: Participants were undergraduate students (N = 120). Working memory was assessed using the Memory Affective Flexibility Task (MAFT), an affective experimental paradigm based on the n-back task that incorporates neutral and valenced visual stimuli. Facets of maladaptive emotion regulation were measured through self-report questionnaires for rumination and emotion reactivity. Associations were examined using multiple linear regression with rumination as the outcome variable. Results: There were small relationships between working memory performance in both neutral and negative conditions of the MAFT with measures of rumination and emotion reactivity. There was a significant moderate correlation between emotion reactivity and rumination. Conclusion: Despite correlations among self-report measures of emotion reactivity and rumination, we observed limited support for the links of task-based hot or cold working memory performance with self-rated emotion measures. This aligns with previous reports of modest correlations between task-based and self-report measures. The findings add to a growing literature on the challenges of capturing the interplay between emotion processes, affect and cognition in neuroscientific research.
SN - 1932-6203
ER -