Effects Of Negative Emotions On Working Memory Of Exercise And Sedentary People

Working memory is a memory system with limited capacity,which stores for a short time and processes information during complex cognitive activities.Working memory is related to intelligence,reasoning,learning,creativity,speech,learning,problem-solving,decision-making and other advanced cognitive activities to a certain extent.It is the core of the advanced cognitive activities of human.Working memory consists of the Phonological Loop,the Visual-spatial Sketch Pad,context buffer and central executive system.The working memory corresponding to the processing of speech information and spatial information in the working memory subcomponent are respectively verbal working memory and spatial working memory.Negative emotions have an effect on working memory.But does this effect work on both verbal and spatial working memory,or only spatial working memory? At present,there is no unified conclusion on this issue.According to the theory of processing efficiency,negative emotions have the same effect on spatial working memory task and verbal working memory task.However,a view led by lavric and Shackman holds that negative emotions only affect spatial working memory.At home and abroad,most of the researches on the effect of exercise on working memory are behavioral studies,only a few ERP studies.The conclusion is that exercise can improve the performance of working memory.Negative emotions damage working memory.So,under the negative emotion,can the promotion effect of sports be reflected? Some studies have found that exercise improves the performance of working memory,while others have found that exercise only improves spatial working memory.So whether long-term exercise can improve the performance of two working memories,or only improve the performance of spatial working memory?In order to answer the above three questions,this study has set up the following three goals: first,to explore which view is supported on the effect of negative emotions on working memory;second,to explore whether exercise can improve working memory performance under negative emotions;third,to explore whether exercise plays a greater role in improving spatial working memory than verbal working memory task.The study selected 16 sport participants(participants have four-year sport experience,sport frequency is 2-3 times a week,30-60 min each time)and 15 sedentary participants(participants seldom exercised in four years,and the average frequency of exercise was lessthan 60 min per week).A mixed experimental design of 2(sport / sedentary people)× 2(neutral / negative emotion)× 2(working memory type: spatial wm / verbal wm)was used.Using a high-time resolution event-related potential(ERP)technique and time-locked Delayed Matching-to-Sample Task(DMST)to investigate the role of exercise and negative emotions on different processing periods in spatial and verbal working memory.Results:(1)The reaction time of subjects induced by negative emotions was shorter,but the accuracy rate would be significantly reduced;(2)The reaction time of exercise subjects was shorter than sedentary subjects,and there was no significant difference in the accuracy rate;(3)Compared with Verbal WM task,the reaction time of spatial WM task was longer,and the accuracy rate was lower.(4)There is interaction between task type and subject type.In spatial and verbal WM tasks,sedentary subjects have longer reaction time than exercise subjects,but in spatial WM task,compared with sedentary subjects,exercise subjects have a trend of shorter reaction time.(1)In the target stimulus locked ERP,the average amplitude of early P3 b of exercise subjects was significantly smaller than that of sedentary subjects;the average amplitude of late P3 b of exercise subjects was significantly smaller than that of sedentary subjects(2)In the probe stimulus locked ERP,the average amplitude of early P3 b of negative emotion was significantly larger than neutral emotion,the average amplitude of early P3 b of spatial WM was smaller than verbal WM,and the average amplitude of late P3 b of spatial WM was smaller than verbal WM.Conclusion :(1)Both spatial and verbal working memory perform worse under negative emotions,which supports the theory of processing efficiency.The main effect of negative emotion on working memory is the encoding of probe stimulus.(2)Long term exercise can improve working memory,and has a greater trend in spatial working memory tasks.This kind of influence mainly occurs in the encoding and storage stage of working memory.(3)It is verified that there are different information storage mechanisms in verbal WM and spatial WM tasks.