Recollecting positive and negative autobiographical memories disrupts working memory.

article i nfo The present article reports two experiments examining the impact of recollecting emotionally valenced autobio- graphical memories on subsequent working memory (WM) task performance. Experiment 1 found that nega- tively valenced recollection significantly disrupted performance on a supra-span spatial WM task. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings to a verbal WM task (digit recall), and found that both negative and positive autobiographical recollections had a detrimental effect on verbal WM. In addition, we observed that these disruptive effects were more apparent on early trials, immediately following autobiographical recollection. Overall, these findings show that both positive and negative affect can disrupt WM when the mood-eliciting