EEG activation studies suggest cerebral lateralization of emotions with greater left than right prefrontal activation during positive mood states and greater right than left prefrontal activation during negative mood states (Davidson et al., 1990). Cerebral lateralization is also observed in cognitive tasks, with verbal fluency associated with left frontal activation and design fluency associated with right frontal activation (Baldo et al., 2001). Further, there are lateralized associations between emotion and cognition; that is, verbal fluency is positively associated with induced positive mood, whereas design fluency is positively associated with induced negative mood (Bartolic et al., 1999). The current study expected naturally occurring mood states to be differentially associated with performance on executive function fluency tasks, and based on previous findings (Cabeza, 2002), that age would moderate the association between emotion and fluency. Results suggest a trend for a positive association between positive affect (PA) and verbal fluency. Age did not moderate associations between emotion and cognitive tasks, although greater interdependence between cognitive and emotion variables in older relative to middle-aged adults suggests decreased lateralization in older adults; however differences in interdependence between older and younger adults were negligible. These results suggest that PA may positively influence some areas of cognition, although age may not moderate these results. Sample and measurement limitations may have contributed to this finding.

Executive functions, potentially including the regulatory control of emotions and expressive fluency (verbal or design), have historically been associated with the frontal lobes. Moreover, research has demonstrated the importance of cerebral laterality with a prominent role of the right frontal regions in the regulation of negative affect (anger, hostility) and in the generation or fluent production of designs rather than verbal fluency (left frontal). In the present research, participants identified with high and with low levels of hostility were evaluated on a design fluency test twice in one experimental session. Before the second administration of the fluency test, each participant underwent the cold pressor stressor. EEG data collection took place before and after each experimental manipulation. It was hypothesized that diminished right frontal capacity in high hostiles would be evident through lowered performance on this cognitive stressor. Convergent validity of the "capacity model" was partially supported wherein high hostile men evidenced reduced delta magnitude over the right frontal region after exposure to a physiological stressor but failed to maintain consistent levels of right cerebral activation across conditions. The results suggest an inability for high hostile men to maintain stable levels of cerebral activation with stress after exposure to physiological and cognitive stress. Moreover, low hostiles showed enhanced cognitive performance on the design task with lower levels of arousal (heightened delta magnitude). In contrast, reduced arousal (heightened delta magnitude) yielded increased executive deficits in high hostiles as evidenced through increased perseverative errors on the design fluency task. / Ph. D.

No description available.