The Working Memory Updating Research Among Anxiously Attached Individuals In The Negative Context

Working memory(WM)updating is considered a core central executive function of WM.WM updating refers to the process of constantly modifying the WM content based on newly presented information,and it mainly functions to monitor incoming information and replace old,no-longer-relevant task information with newer,more relevant information.WM updating is critical for fluidly navigating an emotional event;thus,many researchers investigate the relationship between emotion and WM updating and find people's updating ability has been confirmed to be related to their emotion regulation ability.The attachment system is intrinsically linked to the regulation of emotion,so we assume that attachment should be a factor in the differences in WM updating capacity as attachment is among the most influential conceptual frameworks required for people to understand emotion regulation.According to attachment theory,different attachment styles shaped by repeated attachment caregiving interactions develop different attachment-related strategies for affect regulation considered important for subsequent adaption.When faced with distress or stressful situations,individuals rely on these strategies to regulate their emotions,thoughts,and behaviors.It has been theorized that securely attached individuals form a sense of attachment security based on secure experiences in close relationships and adopt securely based strategies to complete information processing.However,a series of negative experiences with caregivers forces insecurely attached individuals to adopt secondary attachment strategies,and these individuals often show deficits when coping with stressful situations.More specifically,individuals with avoid ant attachment are morelikely to use deactivating strategies,such as denying and suppressing attachment-related thoughts and emotions,to address stress-related situations and keep their attachment system maximally deactivated.When threats are encountered,individuals with anxious attachment tend to adopt hyper activation strategies characterized by the rapid escalation of threats and difficulty disengaging from threat information.Based on this framework,we hypothesize that anxiously attached individuals are more likely to show deficits in WM updating of distressing content as they are often disrupted and ruminate on this information.Therefore,the present study focused on WM updating task performance in the negative context among anxiously attached individuals.For this purpose,one of the most popular measures of WM updating,i.e.,the n-back task was selected.To more effectively evoke emotions,we used an emotional version of the 2-back task by replacing the number with emotional pictures.In addition,attachment theory suggests that attachment styles might not be immutable,and it is already known that an individual's sense of security can be temporarily changed in the laboratory.Based on the results of study 1,this study further explored the buffering effect of secure attachment priming on task performance of working memory updating.To sum up,in this research,two studies using Event-Related Potentials(ERPs),combined with emotional versions of 2-back tasks were performed to examine the working memory(WM)updating task performance in the negative context among anxiously attached individuals.One study also assessed the so othing effect of priming memories of attachment security on task performance.Three types of information,including negative attachment pictures,general negative pictures and neutral pictures,were used as materials in the present study.The results showed that:(1)Anxiously attached individuals showed impaired task performance in negative attachment related working memory updating task,such stimuli induced anxiously attached individuals greater P1 amplitude in early stage,but smaller P300 amplitude in late stage.(2)The damaging effect only appeared in the negative attachment context,and the general negative stimuli did not impair the working memory updating ability among anxiously attached individuals,showing a stimulus-specific characteristic.(3)Activating secure attachment related memory of anxious attachment individuals can improve their emotional regulation ability,so that they can allocate more cognitive resources to the current updating task in the late control stage,and improve their impaired working memory updating ability.In this study,the attachment factor is first introduced into the study on therelationship between emotion and working memory updating.Combined with ERP technology,the working memory updating ability among anxiously attached individuals in negative context was investigated.The results showed that anxiously attached individuals' working memory updating ability was defective in the threatening context,which extended the research on the characteristics of information processing in the field of executive function among anxiously attached individuals.At the same time,different types of negative stimuli were distinguished,which provided support for the attachment related social information processing model proposed by Dykas and Cassidy.And the study 2 showed that secure attachment priming can make the anxiously attached individuals' emotion regulation strategies more effective,thus made their impaired working memory ability improved.The present research verifies the buffering effect of secure attachment priming in the cognitive field and probes into the internal mechanism of its function,providing enlightenment for the research on the plasticity of insecure attachment individuals.