Emotion might selectively affect spatial and verbal cognitive activities and the selective interaction patter   could be modulated by cognitive load. To test the hypotheses, the authors used event-related potentials (ERPs)   technique to investigate the interaction pattern of emotion and working memory (WM) by typical WM n-back   tasks with low and high cognitive loads. In the 0-back task, late ERP components for both spatial and verbal   WM were affected by induced emotional states consistently. However, in the 2-back task, they could clearly   observe that induced emotional states selectively affected ERPs for spatial WM, but not for verbal WM. These   results suggested that the interactive pattern of emotion and WM was modulated by cognitive load. In the   condition of low cognitive load, interaction of emotion and WM was similar and nonspecific. However, with   the increasing of cognitive load, interaction of emotion and WM became specific and selective. ERP results   suggested that attention resource competition could be the underlying neutral mechanism of the selective   interactive pattern between emotion and WM.