Analysis of studies investigating mood-state-dependent retrieval identifies methodological problems that may have contributed to the controversy surrounding the reliability of the effect-in particular, the possible confounding of encoding and retrieval in previous studies. Five experiments are reported investigating the effects of mood on learning and recall. Mood-state-dependent retrieval was ...

Whether positive mood can change reinforcement learning or not remains an open question. In this study, we used a probabilistic learning task and explored whether positive mood could alter the way positive versus negative feedback was used to guide learning. This process was characterized both at the behavioral and electro-encephalographic levels. Thirty two participants were randomly allocated...

BACKGROUND A behavioral hallmark of mood disorders is biased perception and memory for sad events. The amygdala is poised to mediate internal mood and external event processing because of its connections with both the internal milieu and the sensory world. There is little evidence showing that the amygdala's response to sad sensory stimuli is functionally modulated by mood state, however. MET...

We test the effect of players’ moods on their behavior in a gift-exchange game. In the first stage of the game, player 1 chooses a transfer to player 2. In the second stage, player 2 chooses an effort level. Higher effort is more costly for player 2, but it increases player 1’s payoff. We say that player 2 reciprocates if effort is increasing in the transfer received. Player 2 is generous if ef...

OBJECTIVE Alcohol-related implicit (preconscious) cognitive processes are established and unique predictors of alcohol use, but most research in this area has focused on alcohol-related implicit cognition and anxiety. This study extends this work into the area of depressed mood by testing a cognitive model that combines traditional explicit (conscious and considered) beliefs, implicit alcohol-r...

According to embodied theories, the symbols used by language are meaningful because they are grounded in perception, action, and emotion. In contrast, according to abstract symbol theories, meaning arises from the syntactic combination of abstract, amodal symbols. If language is grounded in internal bodily states, then one would predict that emotion affects language. Consistent with this, advoc...

Our group previously demonstrated that changes in mood induced by pleasant or unpleasant odors affect the perceived unpleasantness of painful heat stimuli, without significantly altering perceived pain intensity. In the present study, we examined whether changing mood by viewing emotionally laden visual stimuli also preferentially alters pain unpleasantness. Twelve female subjects immersed thei...

This study examines the effect of replenishment of self-regulatory resources after a depleting task, on compliance through a heuristic. The following three hypotheses were tested. Can positive mood replenish previously depleted self-regulatory resources? Do people comply more with a request when they are exposed to a compliance-promoting heuristic? Can replenishment through positive mood counte...

Cognitive conflict plays an important role in tuning cognitive control to the situation at hand. Based on earlier findings that have demonstrated emotional modulations of conflict processing, we predicted that affective states may adaptively regulate goal-directed behavior that is driven by conflict. This hypothesis was tested by measuring conflict-driven control adaptations following experimen...

Music is used to induce moods in experimental settings as well as for therapeutic purposes. Prior studies suggest that subjects listening to certain types of music experience strong moods and show physiological responses associated with the induced emotions. We hypothesized that cardiovascular and respiratory patterns could discriminate moods induced via music. 18 healthy subjects listened to 1...