Emotional after‐effects on the P3 component of the event‐related brain potential

Agrowing body of literature indicates that affective states can influence cognitive processes. The core assumption of Ellis and Ashbrook's (1988) model explaining these emotional after-effects on cognition is that the emotional state regulates the allocation of processing resources. A negative emotional state is supposed to pre-empt capacity normally allocated to the cognitive task at hand. This is assumed to occur because the negative emotional state leads to an increase in intrusive, irrelevant thoughts, which compete with relevant cognitive activities and thus result in a lack of attention given to relevant features of the task to be performed. In the present study, the hypothesis that n…