Emotional expressivity and working memory capacity

There is a vast literature documenting the effects of emotion expression on physical, psychological and cognitive health. Among these studies is preliminary evidence suggesting that persons who express emotion enjoy gains in neurocognitive functioning, while persons who suppress emotion perform poorly on cognitive tasks. However, the link between the trait of emotional expressivity and cognitive function remains largely unexplored. The primary aim of this study was to examine such a relationship between trait expressivity and cognitive functioning. Specifically persons high in expressivity were expected to have greater working memory performance than persons low in expressivity. Additionally, it was thought that intrusive thinking thinking about stressful life events would mediate the relationship between emotional expressivity and working memory performance. Seventy-four healthy, undergraduate men and women participated in this research study in exchange for extra credit for their psychology courses. The Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire was used to assess individual levels of emotional expressivity. Working memory capacity was assessed via 1) the Digit Span Backwards portion of the Digit Span subtest from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale - 3rd Edition and 2) Turner & Engle's (1989) Arithmetic Operation Word Memory Span Test. Participants also completed a series of self-report questionnaires assessing depressive, anxious, and intrusive thinking symptoms to determine the differential impact of depression, anxiety and intrusive thinking on working memory performance. Multiple regression procedures revealed that overall trait expressivity was largely unrelated to working memory performance. However, individuals characterized as highly expressive about negative emotions performed worse on the Digit Span Backwards task than those who were less expressive about negative events. Positive expressivity was unrelated to working memory function. Findings from this study also support previous findings that intrusive thinking mediates the relationship between stress and working memory, but failed to support the hypothesis that emotional expressivity is a universally adaptive coping style that facilitates working memory functioning.