ZACATECAS DEL COMPONENTE INCENTIVOS A LA COMERCIALIZACIÓN

A large body of psychological evidence has traditionally proposed that cognition can influence and be influenced by emotions (Bower, 1981, Isen, Shalke, Clark, &

Karp, 1978; Johnson & Tversky, 1983; Ortony, Turner, & Antos, 1983; Schwarz &

Clore, 1983). More recent accounts have argued that emotion–cognition interactions are largely agreed to be a major factor influencing the processes that sustain, amplify, or attenuate emotion experience – collectively labelled emotion regulation (Izard, Woodburn, Finlon, Krauthamer-Ewing, Grossman, & Seidenfeld, 2011). Moreover, emotion–cognition interactions are also viewed as a fundamental part of our ability to engage attentional, emotional-cognitive, and behavioural capacities in order to solve everyday challenges – generically referred to as executive function. (cf., Nelson, Thomas, & deHaan, 2006; Zelazo, Carter, Reznick, & Frye, 1997).

The neural pathways most strongly argued to underpin the emotion–cognition interactions point in the direction of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) due to its strong connections with other brain regions in the limbic system and neocortex. For example, the ACC was found to play a significant role in processing emotional arousal, and in the interaction between emotions and attention (Lane, Reiman, Axelrod, Yun, Holmes, & Schwartz, 1998; Rudrauf et al., 2009) and is strongly involved in the experience of intense emotions (Phan, Wager, Taylor, & Liberzon, 2002), and

interpersonal relations and social engagement (Rudebeck, Bannerman, & Rushworth, 2008). At the same time, the ACC is engaged in decision making processes that require executive functioning (Rudrauf et al., 2009), and neuroimaging evidence also suggests that it is associated with the resolution of emotional conflicts (Etkin, Egner, Peraza,

83 Kandel, & Hirsch, 2006). These functions of the ACC are supported by its

interconnectivity with discrete areas of the temporal lobe and subcortical circuits that are involved in controlling activity of the autonomic nervous system (Pessoa, 2009).

The anterior cingulate cortex interacts with the amygdala and nucleus accumbens, in integrating affectively significant signals with control signals in the prefrontal cortex (Pessoa, 2009).

Generically, the executive function is a collection of interrelated cognitive processes, predominantly located within the frontal lobes, which are responsible for controlling and directing other brain processes, emotional responses, and behaviour (Gioia, Isquith, & Guy, 2001). Although there is presently no definitive and universally accepted list of executive functions, the most widely mentioned processes include the capacity for response inhibition, switching back and forth between tasks, resisting interference from distractors, forming and carrying out an efficient problem-solving strategy, and integration of feedback.

A growing body of literature has recognised the role of executive function in moderating emotional responses and behavioural actions (Garcia-Andres, Huertas-Martinez, Ardura, & Fernandez-Alcaraz, 2010; Gioia, Isquith, Guy, & Kenworthy, 2000Gyurak, Goodkind, Kramer, Miller, & Levenson, 2012). Executive control is often reported to influence the processing and experience of emotions (Cohen, Henik, &

Moyal, 2012; Etkin, Egner, Peraza, Kandel, & Hirsch, 2006; Etkin, Prater, Hoeft, Menon, & Schatzberg, 2010). Furthermore, neuroimaging studies have reported that emotion regulation and re-experience are strictly linked with brain regions involved in executive function (Cohen, Henik, & Mor, 2011; Goldin, McRae, Ramel, & Gross, 2008; Kim & Hamman, 2007; Levesque et al., 2003; Ochsner et al., 2004).

Significantly, impaired executive functioning (executive dysfunction) is often associated with maladaptive emotional responses and social behaviour (Anderson, Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1999; Eslinger, Grattan, Damasio, & Damasio, 1992; Grattan & Eslinger, 1991).

However, the explicit influence of cognitive processes on the re-experience of discrete emotions has not been explained by previous studies. The question of interest is what, if not episodic memory, can predict the intensity of the re-experience of discrete

84 basic emotions. More specifically, are differences in executive functions associated with a stronger or less intense re-experience of discrete emotions?

The present study firstly investigates the differences between the experience of four basic discrete emotions (i.e., anger, fear, sadness, and happiness) of amnesic patients (Korsakoff’s syndrome) and control participants with unimpaired episodic memory. Secondly, the relationship between the episodic recall and the experience of each discrete emotion is also assessed. Thirdly, the relationship between the intensity of the emotional re-experience of anger, fear, sadness, and happiness, and executive function abilities is investigated.

3.3 Method

3.3.1 Participants

Twenty Korsakoff’s patients (16 recruited from four residential care units, four patients recruited from home care), and twenty control participants recruited from the local community (see Table 4 for basic demographics) took part in the study in return for the usual amount of participant payment (£10/hour). Recruitment was completed on an opportunity sample basis, and all participants completed all four sessions of the study.

85 Table 4. The basic demographics of the Korsakoff patients and control participants.

The basic demographics of the Korsakoff patients and control participants.

Group Female Male

Age Years of Education

M SD M SD

Korsakoff Patients 6 14 53.5 7.8 11.0 1.3

Control Participants 10 10 64.0 7.8 13.1 3.1

3.3.2 Stimuli and Measures

Four emotional vignettes (developed and piloted previously) were used to elicit discretely anger, fear, sadness, and happiness respectively (see Appendix F). A

propositional analysis (Kintsch, 1994; Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978) was performed on all Endings and each propositional unit was treated as a discrete recall unit – a detailed description of the protocol is presented elsewhere (Turner & Greene, 1977). Each story had 60 recall units, whose exact recollection was used to calculate the recall accuracy (see Appendix G).

Momentary ratings of emotional experience were collected using the anger, fear, happiness, and sadness questionnaires extracted from the Visual Analogue Mood Scales (VAMS; Stern, 1997). The VAMS questionnaires (see Appendix I) required participants to indicate the momentary intensity of each of the four discrete emotions on a 100mm vertical visual analogue scale. Schematic faces representing a neutral expression and the target emotion anchor the analogue scale. The schematic faces at both ends of the scale are accompanied by a word label describing the neutral state and the four target

emotions (i.e., Neutral, Angry, Afraid, Happy, and Sad). The VAMS have been reported to have high validity and test-retest reliability (see Stern, 1997), and were also validated for use with various clinical populations (Arruda, Stern, Somerville; 1999). Recall was measured by comparing the transcripts of the audio recordings of participants’

86 recollections of the stories to the original scripts and counting the number of

propositional units correctly reproduced.

3.3.3 Design

The study employed a mixed-factorial design, and included two groups:

Korsakoff patients and control participants, and four emotions (anger, fear, sadness, and happiness). The presentation order of the four sets of stories was counterbalanced using a balanced latin-square.

3.3.4 Procedure

The emotion elicitation paradigm will be adapted for amnesic patients (see Schmidt, 1996), to include successive repetitions of the verbal stimuli in order to help fixate the episodic details of the emotional stories. This will allow the Korsakoff

patients to process the meaning of the story as a whole, and create associations between the character and context of each story and the emotion eliciting actions presented. In line with classical findings of amnesic patients (Butters et al., 1988; Dean, Massman, Butters, Salmon, Vermak, & Kramer, 1991; Janowski, Shimamura, & Squire, 1989;

Squire, Haist, & Shimamura, 1989), episodic memory is expected to be disrupted by an interference story. The recall accuracy scores immediately after interference and

following a longer delay of 20-30 minutes are expected to illustrate the Korsakoff patients’ level of memory impairment (Squire & Shimamura, 1986), and allow the investigation of the emotional re-experience in the absence of episodic memory.

Participants completed the study over four separate sessions, scheduled one week apart. Each session targeted a specific basic emotion, using a different emotional vignette, and following a similar procedure between sessions. Participants listened to the target emotional story in three successive repetitions, after each presentation

87 recalling everything that they could remember, and immediately providing momentary ratings of the four basic emotions, after each recollection. A novel, distracting story was read at the end of the three repetitions, followed by a similar recall task and emotion rating. Next, participants were asked to recall the target story once again, but notably without listening to it first. After a 30 minute delay interval, occupied with various pen-and-paper tasks, participants were asked again to recall from memory the target story and to provide emotion ratings for each of the four basic emotions.