| dc.description.abstract |
<p>Emotions are pervasive in daily life, and a rich literature has documented how
emotional stimuli and events disrupt ongoing processing and place heightened demands
on control. Yet the executive control mechanisms that subsequently resolve that interference
have not been well characterized. Although many failures of executive control have
emotion at their core, numerous questions remain in the field regarding interactions
between emotion and executive control. How do executive processes act on affective
representations? Are emotional representations less amenable to control? Do distinct
processes or neural networks govern their control? The present dissertation addresses
these questions by investigating the neural systems and cognitive processes that support
executive control in the face of interference from affective sources. Whereas previous
research has emphasized the bottom-up impact of emotion on cognition, this dissertation
will investigate how top-down executive control signals modulate affect's influence
on cognition. Combining behavioral techniques with neuroimaging methodologies, this
dissertation characterizes the interactive relationship between affective processes
and top-down executive control and the ramifications of that interaction for promoting
adaptive behavior.</p><p>Cognitive and behavioral phenomena related to affective interference
resolution are explored in a series of research projects spanning attention and memory.
Task-irrelevant affective representations may disrupt performance, but this interference
appears to be dependent on top-down factors and can be resolved by executive mechanisms.
Interference resolution mechanisms act on representations both of stimuli in the environment
and information stored in memory. The findings reported here support emotion's capacity
to disrupt executive processing but also highlight the role executive control plays
in overcoming that interference in order to promote adaptive behavior.</p>
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