Psi theory states that negative emotion inhibits one’s access to extension memory, reducing cognitive flexibility. This also supports the theory that positive affect increases cognitive flexibility. Standardized emotional primes Positive mood priming also increases cognitive flexibility when prime words do not have individualistic specificity and when primes are visual. Positive affect does not simply promote local processing, but rather improves one’s abilities in his non-preferred dimension. For example, one preferring the local aspect of stimuli would show increased performance in identifying the global aspect and vice versa. This further supports the cognitive flexibility theory. However, many studies regarding global processing and affect conflict with each other. One particular study showed that individuals in happy moods are more likely than those in sad moods to identify images based on global attributes rather than local ones, contrary to other studies that have been conducted. Paying attention to global features is the standard strategy for visual processing. Therefore, if positive feelings are more frequent than negative feelings, and thus positive feelings are more accessible, then positive feelings should instigate global processing more than negative feelings because the global strategy is similarly more accessible. From a more worldly application, positive affect might aid in understanding the larger meaning of stimuli like literature or art, whereas negative affect might aid understanding more minute details within those stimuli, like particularly rhythmic words or the nuance of colors. Faces Navon bias Priming with Navon figures aides the recognition of faces, a holistic task, when the response elicited from the figure matches the precedence of the figure. For example, if the stimulus has local precedence and the participant is cued to respond with the local feature identification, his accuracy in facial recognition improves. The same occurs when global responses are asked of global stimuli. When a facial task requires local processing for identification, participants’ facial recognition improves when they must respond to global precedence stimuli with local responses and vice versa. They are forced to show cognitive flexibility in their responses to the Navon figure primes. One theory explains that normal facial recognition requires automatic processes, whereas special facial recognition requires controlled processes. Automatic processes are aided by correlative stimuli and responses, while controlled processes are aided by stimuli and responses that do not correlate. This indicates that facial recognition depends on type of attention, automatic or controlled, rather than focus on global or local features. Face inversion