Emotional Stroop Paradigm Research Articles

Attentional bias for smoking and affective stimuli: A Stroop task study.

Prior research has demonstrated attentional biases to smoking-related cues among smokers, and several lines of research suggest strong ties between smoking and negative affect. The authors tested attentional biases to both smoking and affective cues in 27 smokers using an emotional Stroop paradigm, and examined the relationship between these forms of attentional bias. Findings indicated significant attentional biases to smoking-related and negative-affect words, but not positive-affect words. In addition, there was a significant correlation between the degree of attentional bias to smoking and negative-affect words. These data provide evidence of a close association between smoking-related and affective cue processing from a cognitive perspective. Potential theoretical and clinical implications for these findings are discussed.

Electrophysiological correlates of threat processing in spider phobics

The electrocortical correlates of the processing of feared/fear-relevant and neutral stimuli were investigated in a pictorial emotional Stroop paradigm with spider phobic, social phobic, and nonphobic subjects. Subjects identified either the color of red or blue pictures of spiders, birds, or flowers (emotional Stroop task) or the object itself (identification task) by pressing different buttons. No emotional Stroop interference was found for spider phobic subjects when identifying the color of spiders as opposed to neutral stimuli. However, in the object identification task, spider phobic subjects identified spiders significantly faster than birds or flowers. Parietal P300 and P400 amplitudes were enhanced independent of task in spider phobic but not in nonphobic subjects when viewing pictures of spiders, which is consistent with previous studies showing that highly unpleasant and arousing pictures affect parietal late positive potentials.

Independent manipulation of emotion in an emotional stroop task using classical conditioning.

The effects of emotional connotation on emotional Stroop interference in anxiety were examined. First, a classical conditioning paradigm was used in which neutral words and nonwords were paired with either negative or neutral pictures. These conditioned stimuli were then presented in an emotional Stroop paradigm. Finally, participants rated each word and nonword for emotional connotation. The high-anxious group demonstrated significant interference for the nonwords that had been negatively conditioned, and these effects did not dissipate over time. The affective rating data supported the view that nonwords, but not the words had been successfully conditioned in the high-anxious group. This experiment provides evidence for the importance of emotional connotation rather than confounded semantic factors in the emotional Stroop effect.

Examination of emotional Stroop interference in obsessive–compulsive disorder

Previous research has produced conflicting findings on whether or not patients with subclinical or manifest obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) share an attentional bias for anxiety-related material. In the present study, 35 OCD patients were compared with 20 healthy controls on their performance in an emotional Stroop paradigm. Nine different stimulus conditions were compiled, including sets for depression-related and anxiety-related words as well as stimuli from two constructs with a potential relevance for the pathogenesis and maintenance of OCD symptomatology: responsibility and conscientiousness. Patients did not show enhanced interference for any of the conditions. Syndrome subtype and severity, avoidance and speed of information processing did not moderate results. The present study concurs with most prior research that OCD patients display no interference effect for general threat words. It deserves further consideration, that emotional interference effects in OCD as seen in other anxiety disorders occur when using idiosyncratic word material with a direct relation to the individual’s primary concerns.

Alcohol attentional bias as a predictor of alcohol abusers’ treatment outcome

Alcohol abusers’ and non-abusers’ attentional distraction for alcohol-related, concern-related, and neutral stimuli was assessed with the emotional Stroop paradigm. Alcohol abusers ( n=14) were tested on admission to inpatient treatment and immediately before discharge, 4 weeks later; non-abusers ( n=16) were also tested twice, with a 4-week intervening interval. Alcohol abusers were assessed for alcohol use 3 months after discharge. Unlike control participants and alcohol abusers whose treatment was successful, alcohol abusers whose treatment was unsuccessful (who relapsed or did not maintain post-discharge outpatient contact) had a significant increase in attentional distraction for alcohol stimuli during the 4 weeks of inpatient treatment. Compared to control participants and alcohol abusers who completed the 4 weeks of treatment, those who did not complete treatment ( n=9) were highly distracted by concern-related stimuli at treatment admission. The results have implications for understanding the cognitive and motivational processes underlying successful treatment for alcohol abuse.

The Emotional Stroop Paradigm: Performance as a Function of Stimulus Properties and Self-Reported Mathematics Anxiety

Stroop tasks are considered useful in assessing anxious affect. Although symptomatically mathematics anxiety is similar to other anxiety conditions, demonstrating a Stroop interference effect among individuals with math anxiety has proven difficult. High and low math anxious individuals were administered a Stroop-like card task involving the counting of numerals and letters, along with a standard computer-based Stroop color-naming task using mathematical and neutral control words. On the card task, processing time was significantly longer among high math anxious participants, an effect most pronounced in the numeral condition. Response time did not differ on the standard Stroop color-naming task as a function of anxiety group or word type. Results suggest that interference effects of math anxiety may be a function of inhibitory deficits or excitatory processes (or both) that are compounded when exposed to more salient (i.e. numeric) stimuli. Implications regarding the assessment of mathematics anxiety and Stroop task methodology are discussed.

Selective processing of emotional information in body dysmorphic disorder

Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a syndrome characterized by distress about imagined defects in one’s appearance. Though categorized as a somatoform disorder, BDD is marked by many characteristics associated with social phobia (e.g., fear of negative evaluation) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (e.g., intrusive thoughts about one’s ugliness, checking). In the present experiment, we tested whether BDD patients exhibit selective processing of threat in the emotional Stroop paradigm as do anxiety-disordered patients. Relative to healthy control participants, BDD patients exhibited greater Stroop interference for positive and negative words, regardless of disorder-relevance, than for neutral words. Further analyses suggested that interference tended to be greatest for positive words related to BDD. These data suggest that BDD patients are vulnerable to distraction by emotional cues in general, and by words related to their current concerns in particular. Results suggest that BDD may indeed be related to anxiety disorders such as social phobia.

Snake fear and the pictorial emotional Stroop paradigm

The purpose of this study was to test a novel pictorial emotional Stroop paradigm that required participants to name the colors of filtered images on a computer screen. High (n = 20) and low (n = 20) snake-fearful participants color-named filters covering images of snakes (threat), cows (neutral), bunnies (positive), and blank screens. Each image appeared as if viewed through tinted sunglasses. The results revealed that both groups took longer to name the colors of filters covering bunnies as well as snakes relative to filters covering cows. Intensely snake-fearful individuals (n = 5), however, exhibited additional interference for snake pictures beyond that evoked by bunny pictures. Thus, pictorial cues having positive as well as negative emotional valence disproportionately captured attention. This paradigm shows promise as a nonlexical, ecologically valid approach to evaluating selective processing of emotional cues.

Hypervigilance in Borderline Disorder: A Test with the Emotional Stroop Paradigm

The hypothesis of cognitive theories of hypervigilance for signs of danger in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) was tested with the emotional Stroop task. BPD patients (n = 15), Cluster C personality disorder (PD) patients (n = 12), and nonpatient controls (n = 15) diagnosed with SCID-I and SCID-II interviews color-named emotional and nonemotional words presented in three colors on a personal computer screen, first in a subliminal condition (words presented for a very short, individually calibrated time followed by a mask to prevent conscious recognition of the word) and then in a supraliminal condition. Four classes of negative words were used, including three classes of BPD-specific words (negative views of others, sexual abuse-related words, negative self-descriptors) and one class of general negative words that was unrelated to BPD pathology. In contrast to the nonpatient controls, both BPD and Cluster C patients showed interference caused by supraliminally presented emotional words. There was no difference between the clinical groups and there was no evidence for specificity of the effect for certain stimulus classes. The subliminal Stroop failed to yield any significant effect. Results are interpreted as evidence for the presence of a relatively crude hypervigilance for any emotionally negative stimulus in both BPD and Cluster C PDs.

Mesolimbic activity associated with psychosis in schizophrenia. Symptom-specific PET studies.

Hallucinations and paranoid delusions are prominent among the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. Such psychotic symptoms are notable for their aberrant representations of, and relation to, the external world and for the emotional/motivational valence associated with the representations. As mesolimbic structures, including the amygdala and ventral striatum, are thought to play a significant role in imparting emotional valence to external stimuli, we here examine the mesolimbic findings of H215O PET studies designed to probe the functional neuroanatomy of psychosis. Patients with schizophrenia (including those with active hallucinations, those with active paranoid delusions, and those without active positive symptoms at the time of scanning) and healthy control subjects were studied. An event-related PET paradigm was used to identify the neural correlates of hallucinations, and a modified emotional stroop paradigm (with threat versus neutral words) was used to test the hypothesis that paranoid patients would have increased mesolimbic activity in response to threat, and even in response to neutral stimuli. The findings suggest that the positive psychotic symptoms of hallucinations and delusions share similar functional neuroanatomical features of increased mesotemporal and ventral striatal activity in the setting of decreased prefrontal activity. The pattern is evident even in a neutral context, unlike the case for normal subjects, who show such features only in response to threat. The implications of these findings for a pathophysiology of psychosis will be discussed in the context of the behavioral neuroanatomical literature in animals and humans.

Experimental approaches to cognitive abnormality in posttraumatic stress disorder

During the past decade, experimental psychopathologists have increasingly applied the concepts and methods of cognitive psychology to elucidate information-processing abnormalities in people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These studies have shown that individuals with PTSD: (a) selectively process trauma-relevant material in the emotional Stroop paradigm; (b) exhibit enhanced memory for material related to trauma in explicit and perhaps implicit tests; (c) exhibit difficulty forgetting trauma words during directed forgetting; and (d) exhibit problems retrieving specific autobiographical memories in response to cue words, instead recalling “overgeneral” memories. These studies suggest that experimental methods can complement traditional, self-report methods for studying cognitive disturbances in PTSD.