Thellung di Courtelary Elisa, Scozia Gabriele, Lasaponara Stefano, Aguzzetti Giorgia, Doricchi Fabrizio, Conversi David
Department of Psychology, La Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Brain Sci. 2024 Jan 12;14(1):78. doi: 10.3390/brainsci14010078.
Previous investigations on healthy humans showed conflicting evidence regarding the impact of mood on working memory performance. A systematic investigation of how mood affects apathy levels in healthy participants is currently missing.
We administered a visuospatial (VS) and a numerical (N) n-back task to a sample of 120 healthy individuals. In these participants, using a series of questionnaires, we also evaluated apathy, mood, working memory, perceived stress, PTSD symptoms caused by the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, and general psychiatric symptoms. Successively, we investigated their performance in the n-back task as a function of scores to these questionnaires.
Participants performed better in the N block than in the VS one. Their accuracy decreased as a function of the n-back difficulty. We reported no differences in working memory performance or apathy as a function of mood, stress, or PTSD symptoms. We found that phobic anxiety negatively predicted accuracy to the numerical n-back task and that subjects with greater anxiety and difficulty in regulating emotions also showed higher levels of withdrawal from the task.
The study's results suggest that while mood did not significantly affect working memory performance, strong associations were found between WMQ scores and working memory capabilities.
先前对健康人的调查显示，关于情绪对工作记忆表现的影响，证据相互矛盾。目前尚缺乏对情绪如何影响健康参与者冷漠水平的系统研究。
我们对120名健康个体进行了视觉空间（VS）和数字（N）n-back任务测试。在这些参与者中，我们还使用一系列问卷评估了冷漠、情绪、工作记忆、感知压力、新冠疫情爆发引起的创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）症状以及一般精神症状。随后，我们根据这些问卷的得分，研究了他们在n-back任务中的表现。
参与者在N组的表现优于VS组。他们的准确率随着n-back难度的增加而降低。我们发现，工作记忆表现或冷漠程度在情绪、压力或PTSD症状方面没有差异。我们发现，恐惧焦虑对数字n-back任务的准确率有负向预测作用，并且焦虑程度较高且情绪调节困难的受试者退出任务的程度也较高。
研究结果表明，虽然情绪并未显著影响工作记忆表现，但在工作记忆商数（WMQ）得分与工作记忆能力之间发现了强关联。
