Conscious Access to Suppressed Threatening Information Is Modulated by Working Memory
研究发现，工作记忆中的情绪内容能加速抑制状态下威胁面孔（恐惧/愤怒）的意识通达，且该效应仅针对威胁面孔，不受知觉启动影响，表明工作记忆可调节无意识情绪加工。
Previous research has demonstrated that emotional information processing can be modulated by what is being held in working memory (WM). Here, we showed that such content-based WM effects can occur even when the emotional information is suppressed from conscious awareness. Using the delayed-match-to-sample paradigm in conjunction with continuous flash suppression, we found that suppressed threatening (fearful and angry) faces emerged from suppression faster when they matched the emotional valence of WM contents than when they did not. This effect cannot be explained by perceptual priming, as it disappeared when the faces were only passively viewed and not held in WM. Crucially, such an effect is highly specific to threatening faces but not to happy or neutral faces. Our findings together suggest that WM can modulate nonconscious emotion processing, which highlights the functional association between nonconsciously triggered emotional processes and conscious emotion representation.