• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.227-241
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• 2023

This study aimed to examine the influence of emotional information on task switching performance from a cross-cultural perspective. Specifically we investigated whether the impact of affective information differs between Koreans and Caucasian when they perform a switching task using pictures that express positive and negative emotions. In this study, Korean and Caucasian college students were presented with either positive or negative faces and asked to perform either an emotion or a gender judgment task based on the color of the picture frame. The results showed that the switching cost from the gender judgment task to the emotion task was significantly larger than the switching cost from the gender task to the emotion task for both Koreans and Caucasians. This asymmetric switching cost was maintained when the previous and current pictures showed the same emotion but disappeared when two images presented different emotions. Regardless of the participant's cultural background, switching costs were greater for emotional tasks where the emotion was directly related to the task than for gender tasks. However, the effect of emotional switching on switching costs varied by the individual's background. Koreans were less sensitive to whether poser's emotion was changed than Americans. These results demonstrate that emotional information affects cognitive task performance and suggest that the effects of emotion may differ depending on the individual's cultural background.