Hows does emotion influence cognitive control?

What is it about?

This is a short review of how emotional stimuli influence cognitive control processes, conflict processing like Stroop, Flanker and Simon conflict in particular. The overview shows that whether emotion speeds up or impairs cognitive control depends on whether it is the target stimulus or a distractor that is emotional. The reivew integrates neural data and interindividual difference data in a comprehensive model.

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Why is it important?

Integrating a lot of the published work on emotional influences on cognitive control, this review gives a good overview and raises the critical questions for future research. It also includes a section on the influence of anxiety and depression, asking for clinical studies to explore the important role of emotion-cognitive control interactions in psychopathology.

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