Priming Emotional Salience Reveals the Role of Episodic Memory and Task Conflict in the Non-color Word Stroop Task.

Chiao Wei Hsieh,Dinkar Sharma

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01826

Abstract

Previous research attempted to account for the emotional Stroop effect based on connectionist models of the Stroop task that implicate conflict in the output layer as the underlying mechanism (e.g., Williams et al., 1996). Based on Kalanthroff et al.’s (2015) proactive-control/task-conflict (PC-TC) model, our study argues that the interference from non-color words (neutral and negative words) is due to task conflict. Using a study-test procedure 120 participants (59 high and 61 low trait anxiety) studied negative and neutral control words prior to being tested on a color responding task that included studied and unstudied words. The results for the low anxiety group show no emotional Stroop effect, but do demonstrate the slowdown in response latencies to a block of studied and unstudied words compared to a block of unstudied words. In contrast, the high anxiety group shows (a) an emotional Stroop effect but only for studied negative words and (b) a reversed sequential modulation in which studied negative words slowed down the color-responding of studied negative words on the next trial. We consider how these findings can be incorporated into the PC-TC model and suggest the interacting role of trait anxiety, episodic memory, and emotional salience driving attention that is based on task conflict.

Highlights

The Stroop task is often used to investigate executive control processes
The lack of interaction with trait anxiety is consistent with previous reviews of the memory bias literature
There is some evidence that a memory bias with trait anxiety can occur for free recall memory tasks but only when the depth of processing is shallow during the study phase

Summary

Introduction

The Stroop task is often used to investigate executive control processes. The most common form of the task is one in which a word is printed in an ink color, with the focus to report the ink color and ignore the word. With color words the word and ink color can be congruent (e.g., word RED printed in red) or incongruent (e.g., word GREEN printed in red), with the difference in reaction time (RT) used to measure the Stroop effect. A neutral control (e.g., XXXX printed in red) can be used to separate the Stroop effect into interference (difference between incongruent and neutral trials) and facilitation (difference between congruent and neutral trials) effects (MacLeod, 1991). Informational conflict is thought to be dependent on the congruency between the word and ink color, with conflict arising when the meaning of the word, and the ink color contradict

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