Effective cognitive processing contributes to the acquisition of emotional meaning

Working memory training (WMT) has shown potential benefits in emotion regulation (ER), mainly in termsof improved ability to downregulate negative emotions in cognitive reappraisal. However, the goal of cog-nitive reappraisal can be not only to reduce negative emotion but also to increase negative emotion. It is notclear what effect WMT has on the upregulation of negative emotion. In the current study, we conducted a 20-day WMT with participants to explore the effects of training on the down- and upregulation of negative emo-tion and followed participants for 3 months after training to examine the persistent effects of training. Ourresults suggest that participants in the training group improved their ability to regulate negative emotions inboth the down- and upregulation conditions. Notably, benefits from training were also observed in the looknegative condition, suggesting that WMT may elicit general cognitive enhancement that is broadly transfer-able to any kind of negative situation to help individuals regulate the effects of negative emotions. In addi-tion, our study also showed that the improvement in negative ER by training could last even over 3 months.

Keywords: working memory training, up- and downregulation of negative emotion, sustained improvement,ERPs

Effects of Working Memory Training on Different Goals ofCognitive Reappraisal.pdf