Encoding under time pressure: stages and electrophysiological mechanisms in facial expression processing

Working memory encoding comprises establishment and refinement stages. Encoding acceleration under shortened time constraints is achieved by truncation of the refinement stage rather than acceleration of the establishment stage. Moreover, this acceleration compromises encoding quality by not only truncating the refinement stage, but also limiting the resource allocation to attentional capture, representation establishment, and storage. These findings have broader implications for understanding cognitive performance under time pressure.