Negative affect reduces performance in implicit sequence learning

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 8; no. 1; p. e54693
• Main Authors: Shang, Junchen, Fu, Qiufang, Dienes, Zoltan, Shao, Can, Fu, Xiaolan
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 22-01-2013; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Affect; Bayes Theorem; Bayesian analysis; Biology; Brain research; Cognition & reasoning; Emotional behavior; Emotions; Female; Humans; Hypotheses; Information processing; Knowledge; Laboratories; Learning; Male; Medicine; Moods; Music - psychology; Personality; Reaction Time; Reaction time task; Regularity; Science; Self evaluation; Semantics; Serial Learning - physiology; Social and Behavioral Sciences; Social psychology; Stereotypes; Young Adult; Beijing China
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0054693

It is well documented that positive rather than negative moods encourage integrative processing of conscious information. However, the extent to which implicit or unconscious learning can be influenced by affective states remains unclear.
A Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task with sequence structures requiring integration over past trials was adopted to examine the effect of affective states on implicit learning. Music was used to induce and maintain positive and negative affective states. The present study showed that participants in negative rather than positive states learned less of the regularity. Moreover, the knowledge was shown by a Bayesian analysis to be largely unconscious as participants were poor at recognizing the regularity.
The results demonstrated that negative rather than positive affect inhibited implicit learning of complex structures. Our findings help to understand the effects of affective states on unconscious or implicit processing.