Abstract
We re-examined a modified emotional Stroop task that included an additional colour-word alongside the emotional word, providing the response conflict of the traditional Stroop task. Negative emotionally salient (i.e. unpleasant’) words are claimed to capture attention, producing a smaller Stroop effect for negative words compared to neutral words; this phenomenon is called the emotional dilution of the Stroop effect. To address previous limitations, this study compared negative words with lexically matched neutral words in a powered sample of 45 participants. Results demonstrated an emotional Stroop effect (slower colour-naming responses for negative words) and a traditional Stroop effect but not an emotional dilution of the Stroop effect. This finding is at odds with claims that other processing resources are diminished through the failure to disengage attention from emotional information. No matter how attention towards emotional information builds up over time, our findings indicate that attentional resources are not fully captured by negative words.
Highlights
A popular paradigm widely used to investigate the role of emotion on attention and cognition is the emotional Stroop
There was no significant interaction between these two factors, congruence did not interact with carrier-word valence (F (1, 5.41) = 0.20, p = 0.68)
We examined the impact of lexical control on the magnitude of the emotional Stroop effect (ESE) and sought replication of the emotional dilution of the Stroop effect (SE)
Summary
A popular paradigm widely used to investigate the role of emotion on attention and cognition is the emotional Stroop. The Stroop effect (SE) refers to the performance cost arising from the additional requirements to inhibit the pre-potent response to the written word in the incongruent condition. This performance cost is measured by subtracting the incongruent condition from the congruent. Response times (RTs) are longer for emotional words than emotionally neutral words; the emotional Stroop effect (ESE). This effect has been applied to explain attentional bias in clinical populations with an emotional disorder when the emotional connotations of the words correspond with the concerns surrounding the disorder, i.e
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