Emotional Stroop Research Articles

Biomarkers of attention bias during public speaking anxiety

The analysis of brain signals and their properties yields significant insights into the fundamental neural impairments associated with attention bias in individuals suffering from public speaking anxiety (PSA). This study aims to identify electroencephalogram (EEG) and performance biomarkers of attention bias in individuals with public speaking anxiety using the ex-Gaussian modeling technique, frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) and delta-beta correlation (DBC). 12 subjects with high (H) PSA and 12 subjects with low (L) PSA performed the modified emotional stroop task. EEG data were captured using the low-cost 14-channel emotiv Epoc+. Results showed that the ex-Gaussian sigma was higher in the emotional condition in the high public speaking anxiety (HPSA) group, indicating attention bias. The study also found higher right FAA in HPSA compared to LPSA group. There was a negative correlation between σ and alpha power in the left region of the brain in the HPSA group, potentially related to attentional bias. Moreover, there was a notable trend towards significantly heightened DBC in the frontal and central regions of the brain among HPSA subjects. In conclusion, in biomedical engineering, the ex-Gaussian model, FAA and DBC are useful because they can identify EEG and performance biomarkers of attention bias in people with PSA.

Emotional stroop task reveals altered neural activation patterns in early-treated phenylketonuria

Emotional stroop task reveals altered neural activation patterns in early-treated phenylketonuria

Attentional deficits in fibromyalgia: an ERP study with the oddball dual task and emotional stroop task

The present study investigated the neural correlates of attentional deficits in fibromyalgia through an Oddball Dual Task and an Emotional Stroop Task, both performed during EEG recordings. Thirty female participants were recruited, being divided into two groups: a group of patients with fibromyalgia (FM, n = 15, Mage = 51.87, SDage = 7.12) and a healthy control group (HC, n = 15, Mage = 46.13, SDage = 8.41). In the Emotional Stroop Task, the behavioural results showed that patients with FM had less hits and longer times reactions than healthy controls. These results were consistent with those obtained with our Event-related Potential (ERP) methodology, which evidenced that patients with FM had higher frontal latencies in the P200 time-window compared to healthy controls. Regarding the Oddball Dual Task, we found that patients with FM had lower P300 amplitudes than healthy participants. Moreover, we found that rare stimuli elicited higher P300 amplitudes than frequent stimuli for healthy controls, but this comparison was non-significant for patients with FM. Taken together, our results suggest that fibromyalgia may be associated to a reduced processing speed, along to reduced neural resources to process stimuli, mainly in distinguishing relevant (rare) and irrelevant (frequent) stimuli according to the goals of the task. Altogether, our results seem to support the hypothesis of generalized attentional deficits in FM.

Melatonin affects cognitive performance to emotional stimuli in emotional stroop task

Melatonin modulates social behaviors including aggression and cognitive performance. Slotten and Krekling (1996) explored how melatonin administration affects cognitive tasks such as logical reasoning. In this study, they found melatonin slowed down reactions in tasks. However, it has been unclear whether basal melatonin modulates cognitive performance using stroop task and emotional stroop task. In this study, we administered three types of light for one hour to normal participants. After that, we collected saliva and participants waited for one hour. They filled out the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and the Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS) for three times during the experiment to measure the change in mood and sleepiness. After answering the PANAS and SSS for the second time, participants completed the stroop task and emotional stroop task. This study found melatonin modulates performance in emotional stroop task but not stroop task. Melatonin modulates the number of errors, response time to emotional stimuli and emotional stroop effect in emotional stroop task. Melatonin did not affect response time to neutral words. Furthermore, the effect of light on melatonin was not observed, but the effect of time on melatonin was observed. We found that melatonin modulates cognitive performance to emotional words but not neutral words. High melatonin group reduced the number of errors and slowed down response to emotional stimuli compared with low melatonin group. Moreover, melatonin was influenced by time rather than light. It is expected to explore the relationship between melatonin and social behaviors using basal melatonin.

The relevance of familiarity in the context of self-related information processing.

Humans are inclined to preferentially process self-related content, referred to as the "self-bias." Different paradigms have been used to study this effect. However, not all paradigms included a familiar other condition (but rather an unfamiliar other condition), needed to differentiate self-specific effects from the impact of familiarity. The primary goal of our study was to test the suitability for studying the self-bias of two paradigms that provide robust measures of salience effects-that is, the Repetition Blindness (RB) effect and the Emotional Stroop (ES) interference-while addressing the familiarity confound. We further explored whether self-bias effects were related to autism symptomatology, as a reduced self-bias in autism has been reported in previous research. In an online procedure, 82 adults performed an RB task and an ES task in a counterbalanced order, while being presented with both self- and familiar other-related stimuli. Results of both frequentist and Bayesian analyses did not provide evidence in favour of a specific self-bias on either task: we found no significant modulation of the RB effect, nor of the ES interference, for the own versus a close other's name. Moreover, no link with autism symptomatology was found. Tackling a crucial shortcoming from earlier studies, our investigation raises awareness on the importance of accounting for familiarity when investigating self-related processing.

Inhibitory Control of Emotional Interference in Deaf Children: Evidence From Event-Related Potentials and Event-Related Spectral Perturbation Analysis.

BackgroundImpairment of interference control ability may reflect a more general deficit in executive functioning, and lead to an increase in internal-externalized problems such as impulsivity, which has been reported in deaf children. However, few researches have examined the neural mechanism of this impairment.MethodsThis study applied the electroencephalogram (EEG) technique to investigate the interference control ability in 31 deaf children and 28 hearing controls with emotional face-word stroop task.ResultsResults from behavioral task showed that deaf children exhibited lower accuracy compared to hearing controls. As for EEG analysis, reduced activation of ERP components in N1 and enhanced activation of ERP components in N450 have been found in deaf children. Besides, incongruent condition elicited larger N450 than congruent condition. Furthermore, for brain oscillation, alpha band (600–800 ms) revealed a reduced desynchronization in deaf children, while theta band (200–400 ms) revealed an enhanced synchronization in deaf children and incongruent condition, which were in line with ERP components.ConclusionThe present findings seem to indicate that the deficit during emotional interference control ability among deaf children might be due to the impaired attention allocation ability and emotional cognitive monitoring function during emotional conflict detection process. Consequently, reduced N1 and enhanced N450 might be due to early attention impairment causing more effort of deaf children later in emotional cognitive monitoring.

Functional Coupling of the Locus Coeruleus Is Linked to Successful Cognitive Control.

The locus coeruleus (LC) is a brainstem structure that sends widespread efferent projections throughout the mammalian brain. The LC constitutes the major source of noradrenaline (NE), a modulatory neurotransmitter that is crucial for fundamental brain functions such as arousal, attention, and cognitive control. This role of the LC-NE is traditionally not believed to reflect functional influences on the frontoparietal network or the striatum, but recent advances in chemogenetic manipulations of the rodent brain have challenged this notion. However, demonstrations of LC-NE functional connectivity with these areas in the human brain are surprisingly sparse. Here, we close this gap. Using an established emotional stroop task, we directly compared trials requiring response conflict control with trials that did not require this, but were matched for visual stimulus properties, response modality, and controlled for pupil dilation differences across both trial types. We found that LC-NE functional coupling with the parietal cortex and regions of the striatum is substantially enhanced during trials requiring response conflict control. Crucially, the strength of this functional coupling was directly related to individual reaction time differences incurred by conflict resolution. Our data concur with recent rodent findings and highlight the importance of converging evidence between human and nonhuman neurophysiology to further understand the neural systems supporting adaptive and maladaptive behavior in health and disease.

Cognitive training in recently-abstinent individuals with alcohol use disorder improves emotional stroop performance: Evidence from a randomized pilot trial

BackgroundCognitive training interventions appear capable of improving alcohol-associated neurobehavioral deficits in recently detoxified individuals. However, efficacy remains incompletely characterized in alcohol use disorder (AUD) and available data address only non-affective cognitive outcomes; enhancement of social cognition remains uninvestigated. We utilized a training paradigm in which successfully ignoring emotionally-valent stimuli benefitted task performance. We hypothesized trained individuals would display improvements in an affective inhibitory control task, and that individuals trained with high valence (relative to neutral) stimuli would evince greater improvement. Methods42 recently detoxified inpatients with AUD were assigned to one of three groups (Emotional Training, Neutral Training, or Treatment as Usual [TAU]). Training consisted of two computerized working memory tasks (dual-modality n-back task; attend/ignore task) which included task-irrelevant stimuli (emotional vs. neutral). Post-training performance efficiency (indexing speed-accuracy tradeoffs) in an emotional Stroop task was the outcome of interest. ResultsSignificant group by time interactions were detected for emotional Stroop performance, supporting our hypothesis that trained groups would exhibit greater improvement than TAU controls (F[2,39]=8.61, p < .01). Additionally, the emotional training condition appeared to result in greater improvement relative to neutral training (F[1,26]=4.98, p < .01). ConclusionResults are consistent with current literature suggesting the potential of training to enhance cognitive recovery in early abstinence. Findings inform the development of training protocols, suggesting integration of task-irrelevant distractor stimuli in training may enhance cognitive control outcomes. Further, they expand the relevant domains for application of training approaches, providing novel evidence that among individuals with AUD, training-associated benefits may extend to social cognitive domains.

Gender differences in functional connectivity of left-handers during the passage of an emotional stroop task

ntroduction. Neural correlates underlying the processing of emotional information, influence of emotional interference on cognitive control, gender difference in such activities remain a topic of research and discussion.Purpose. To study the connectivity of the brain regions involved in the processing of emotional information in left-handers, based on the EEG data obtained during their passage the emotional Stroop test (EST).Methods. EEG was registered during subjectpassage the EST successively two times. In EST a series including 240 words were presented at the center of the computer screen in one of two colors: red or green, words were emotional (negative) or neutral, shown in pseudorandom order. Some of these stimuli (target words names of animals and plants) participants were instructed to ignore (do not press any keys). Subjects were asked to respond with right hand (pressing P on a keyboard) for words printed in red and with left hand (pressing Q on a keyboard) for words printed in green. It was investigated source level functional connectivity (FC) in two groups of left-handers (17 to 22 years old): women (n=10) and men (n=10). FC was analysed between 21 regions of interest (ROI), selected on the base of fMRI research literature. Connections between ROIs were assessed using lagged phase synchronization (LPS) with eLORETA complex.Results. Statistically significant differences in FC by LPS between men and women groups were found only in first passage of EST. Particularly, FCof women, compared to men was: -higher between anterior cingulate cortex and left middle temporal area in delta band;-lower between left hippocampal formation and right frontal eye fields in beta-1;-and higher in beta-2 between right frontal eye fields and right anterior insula.were shorter for both emotional and neutral words. The interference effect was observed in both tests in women and only in the first test in men. Interference effect also was higher for responses with left hand for both groups. Repeated passage of the emotional Stroop test leads to reducing the effect of interference in men but not in women.Originality.The main neural networks have been identified, which in left-handed women are more involved in the processing of negative emotional information than in left-handed men.Conclusion. Compared to men, women have stronger connections of two areas of the brain involved in processing negatively colored emotional information, with other areas of the brain. The anterior cingulate cortex, which is considered to playan important role in attention and executive functions, is connected to the left middle temporal area, involved in the analysis of visual movement and words processing. Activation of theright anterior insular cortex, which is closely related to emotionalprocessing, is connected to the right frontal eye fields, which are known to play a key role in the goal directed eyes movements.Contrary, area of right frontal eye fields of men is more tightly connected to the contralateral left hippocampus, and is involved in semantic rather than emotional processing of information.Key words: emotional Stroop test;gender differences; left-handers; EEG; functional connectivity

Cognitive-Affective control training reduces worry and GAD symptoms: investigating training and transfer effect

Symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), have been considered as an index of cognitive control deficiency. The aim of this study was to investigate whether enhancing cognitive control over emotional stimuli can decrease worry intrusions and severity of GAD symptoms. Based on the results of structured clinical interview for the DSM-5 (SCID), 45 students of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (FUM) were who had GAD, chosen to participate in this study. Then they were assigned equally and randomly to three conditions of intervention, control and active cotrol groups; then they completed PSWQ, GAD-7, emotional stroop task and Go/No Go task as pre-test. The intervention group received 16 sessions of cognitive-affective control training using emotional stroop with trial-based feedback, also the active control group received the same amount of training sessions of emotional stroop with no feedback, and finally the control group was on a waiting list. After post-test assessments, results of ANCOVA showed that training sessions was effective on stroop performance, reduction in worry intrusions and GAD symptoms, while training in cognitive inhibition did not transfer to behavioral inhibition. Findings revealed that not only cognitive control plays a major role in worry and GAD symptoms, but also cognitive control training might be a promising path to decrease the severity of anxiety disorders. Training with emotional stimuli can enhance performance and using trial-based feedback can pave the way to get better clinical results

The effects of co-actor on the emotional stroop task performance

The effects of co-actor on the emotional stroop task performance

Attentional Bias and Prediction of Attempted Suicide in Clinical and Non-clinical Population

Objective: the aim of the present research was to analyze the predictability of suicide attempts, based on attentional bias in a clinical and non-clinical population. Methods: 120 participants (77 females and 43 males) were intentionally selected in three diagnostic groups: clinical suicides, clinical non-suicides, and non-clinical ones (40 individuals in each group). They participated in the Suicide Stroop Task as well as the Beck Scale of Suicide Ideation (BSS). The attentional bias parameters, including reaction time and interference time, were computed and the data were analyzed using Multivariate Analysis of Variance and Discriminant Analysis. Results: the results obtained from the multivariate analysis revealed that the variables of interference time did not have a significant indication for the three groups of individuals in suicide stroop (P&lt;0.568; F=0.569), positive stroop (P&lt;0.201; F=1.626), and negative stroop (P&lt;0.863; F=0.147). However, in the case of reaction time, there was a significant difference in the values obtained for all the three groups in terms of suicide stroop (P&lt;0.000; F=12.759), positive stroop (P&lt;0.000; F=18.520), negative stroop (P&lt;0.000; F=10.995), and neutral stroop (P&lt;0.000; F=8.288). In addition, the results obtained from the discriminant analysis show that the variables of suicide ideation (0.822), reaction time in positive stroop (0.571), suicide stroop (0.470), negative stroop (0.438), and neutral stroop (0.376) were correspondingly crucial in predicting the behavior of the clinical suicide attempt, clinical non-suicide attempt, and non-clinical groups. Conclusion: We found that for suicide stroop, the clinical and non-clinical cases did not show a significant difference in terms of the interference effect; however, they differed in terms of reaction time. Therefore, it seems that using emotional stroop, attentional bias towards suicide-related topics is not dependent on the clinical situations, and other parameters, such as scoring methods should be considered. However, there is still a need to conduct more extensive studies.

Attributional and attentional bias in children with conduct problems and callous-unemotional traits: a case\u2013control study

BackgroundChildren who are frequently aggressive or lack empathy show various deficits in their social information processing. Several findings suggest that children with conduct problems (CP) show a tendency to interpret ambiguous situations as hostile (hostile attribution bias) and have difficulties to disengage from negative stimuli (attentional bias). The role that additional callous-unemotional traits (CU-traits) play in these biases is yet unclear. Investigating both attentional and attributional aspects of social information processing in children can help us to understand where anomalies in the processing pathway occur and whether the biases are associated with CP and CU-traits separately or in an interactive manner.MethodsWe compared three groups of children: (a) 25 children with CP and low levels of CU-traits (b) 25 children with CP and elevated levels of CU-traits (c) 50 gender (68% male), age (8–17 years) and intelligence score-matched typically developing children, on a pictorial emotional stroop task and a hostile attribution bias task.ResultsIn contrast to our predictions, there were no significant group differences regarding attentional biases or hostile attribution biases. Boys with CP and high levels of CU-traits showed a significantly higher hostile attribution bias compared to girls with CP and high levels of CU-traits. The attention bias to angry stimuli significantly correlated with the hostile attribution bias. Compared to the control group the CP group with low levels of CU-traits showed a significantly stronger association between the attention bias to angry stimuli and the hostile attribution bias.ConclusionsThe current study provides evidence that boys with CP and high levels of CU-traits interpret ambiguous situations as more hostile than girls do. Our results further provide indications that the interaction of attentional and attributional biases in children with CP might contribute to their increased aggressive behavior.

ERP Evidence for Inhibitory Control Deficits in Test-Anxious Individuals.

Introduction: Individuals with test anxiety [i.e., high test anxiety (HTA)] always treat tests/examinations as a potential threat. This cognitive mode impairs these individuals’ ability of inhibitory control and leads to a high level of anxiety. However, characterizing aspects of HTA’s impaired inhibitory control ability are unclear and need to be studied. Methods: Forty-six participants were recruited and divided into a HTA (N = 26) and low test anxiety (LTA; i.e., healthy control; N = 20) group. Self-reports (Test Anxiety Scale, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for negative emotions) were obtained. An emotional Stroop (ES) task and a numerical Stroop (NS) task, causing different types of interferences, were used for assessing the emotional and cognitive aspects of attentional control ability (behavioral data). Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were registered to further assess processing stages related to different aspects of attentional control ability. Results: Compared with the LTA group, the HTA group has inhibitory control deficits of both emotional (see ERP components P1-P2-N2 and P3) and cognitive (see ERP component P3) interference. Compared with the LTA group, the HTA doesn't have lower accuracy in neither ES nor NS but displays longer reaction times only in ES. Additionally, the HTA group’s ES results also show that (1) the degree of emotional interference indicates the level of an individual’s anxiety, and (2) the ERP component P2 may serve as an index of the level of test anxiety. Conclusion: HTA individuals have extensive inhibitory deficits for both emotional and cognitive aspects; however, impairment impacts more on emotional aspects than on cognitive aspects. Additionally, as compared to NS, the negative impact of more impaired processing stages on task performance is more substantial in ES.

Isolating the Effects of Word's Emotional Valence on Subsequent Morphosyntactic Processing: An Event-Related Brain Potentials Study.

Emotional information significantly affects cognitive processes, as proved by research in the past decades. Recently, emotional effects on language comprehension and, particularly, syntactic processing, have been reported. However, more research is needed, as this is yet very scarce. The present paper focuses on the effects of emotion-laden linguistic material (words) on subsequent morphosyntactic processing, by using Event-Related brain Potentials (ERP). The main aim of this paper is to clarify whether the effects previously reported remain when positive, negative and neutral stimuli are equated in arousal levels and whether they remain long-lasting. In addition, we aimed at testing whether these effects vary as a function of the task performed with the emotion-laden words, to assess their robustness across variations in attention and cognitive load during the processing of the emotional words. In this regard, two different tasks were performed: a reading aloud (RA) task, where participants simply read aloud the words, written in black on white background, and an Emotional Stroop (ES) task, where participants named the colors in which the emotional words were shown. After these words, neutral sentences followed, that had to be evaluated for grammaticality while recording ERPs (50% containing a morphosyntactic anomaly). ERP analyses showed main effects of valence across tasks on the two components reflecting morphosyntactic processing: The Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) is increased by previous emotional words (more by negative than positive) relative to neutral ones, while the P600 is similarly decreased. No interactions between task and valence were found. As a result, an emotion-laden word preceding a sentence can modulate the syntactic processing of the latter, independently of the arousal and processing conditions of the emotional word.

A comparative study of the influence of emotional conflict on the emotional attention processing of the elderly and the young

Objective To explore the impact of emotional conflicts on the emotional attention processing between the elderly and the young. Methods A total of 37 young and 37 elderly participants were enrolled in the study.2 (group: old group, young group) × 2 (Emotional valence of face: happy, fear) × 2 (cue type: consistent and inconsistent) mixed experimental design was used among the emotional stroop task and eye tracking task for all of subjects. Results (1) Behavioral response analysis showed that stroop interference effects in young and old groups were not significant under different emotional conditions (F=0.02, P>0.05). (2) The internal characteristics of the face for the gaze time were analyzed, and the total gaze time of the elderly group ((402.28±15.88) ms) was significantly longer than that of the younger group ((340.52±15.88) ms) under the happy-inconsistent condition(t=2.75, P<0.05). The total gaze time of the elderly group under the happy-inconsistent condition was significantly longer than under the fear-inconsistent condition((365.96±13.95) ms)(t=4.32, P<0.05). The first gaze time for a happy face was significantly longer than that for the fear face((315.56±13.13)ms vs (293.51±13.23)ms, t=4.33, P<0.05), and also showed a positive effect. Conclusion Emotional conflicts have an impact on the emotional attention processing of the elderly, and the elderly are more likely to process the positive stimulation in the control stage. Key words: Elderly; Emotional attention processing; Eye movement; Emotional interference effect; Conflict adaptive effect

The emotional stroop test for screening of suicide risk

IntroductionSuicide is problematic today, being one of the most potentially fatal psychological phenomena, so it is important to assess thinking about suicide or suicidal ideation.ObjectivesIn this study we aim to develop methodological procedures, in order to understand if the emotional stroop test for screening of suicide risk is a good measure of suicidal ideation.MethodsA cross-sectional study was carried-out among a convenience sample of 100 subjects. The data collection was done using a socio-demographic questionnaire, the emotional stroop test for screening of suicide risk, the suicidal ideation questionnaire and the beck depression inventory.ResultsRegarding the degree of association between the score of interference of the emotional stroop test and level of suicidal ideation there is a strong negative correlation and statistically significant. There are statistically significant differences in the scores on the three sheets of emotional stroop test between subjects with high suicidal ideation and low suicidal ideation. Attention is impaired in the group with suicidal ideation.ConclusionsThe emotional stroop test for screening of suicide risk is a useful, rapid and simple assessment tool that can to be used to detect symptoms of suicidal ideation.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

回避型依恋者对消极情绪信息防御性加工特征

准确加工情绪信息在人际关系管理及一般社会功能上起重要作用。不安全依恋风格影响个体的情绪加工偏向。回避型依恋者抑制消极刺激的加工，并且被看做拥有早期无意识的焦虑自我模型以及晚期控制的积极自我模型。本文主要探讨回避型依恋者加工消极情绪信息的防御性排斥特征，具体表现为一种早期警觉和晚期抑制的双重加工模型。行为证据证明了回避型依恋者在早期自动化加工阶段表现出同依恋焦虑者类似的对威胁相关信息的警觉探测。ERP成分也体现了回避者早期警觉的特征，表现在N1、P2等注意警觉相关成分以及C1、P1等基于粗略视觉特征的视觉情绪刺激加工相关的早成分更为强烈的波幅上。在晚期加工阶段这类个体则表现出对消极情绪的回避抑制加工，在表情模仿任务中出现“反转的微笑”以及stroop任务中更少的干扰效应证明其在晚期加工阶段的抑制加工特征。神经层面表现为回避型个体在认知控制脑区如背外侧前额叶、眶额皮层等脑区的激活。回避者对负性情绪的高度警觉是成功回避的前提，而这一策略在个体认知资源不足时出现失效。未来研究可进一步探讨回避型依恋与警觉-抑制注意模式的因果基础；关注防御性情绪信息加工对个体健康以及关系维持的影响及后果；深入考察去激活策略功能的有效性及其神经机制；深化回避防御在临床治疗上的应用，进一步为治疗依恋混乱相关的临床策略提供新的启示。 Accurate processing of emotional information plays an important role in the management of in-terpersonal relationship and social function. Insecure attachment style effects the process of threaten related information. Individuals with avoidant pattern of attachment are assumed to repress threaten-related signals. They are assumed to have one internal working model associated with anxiety, operating out of awareness at early, automatic stages of information processing, and another positive model operating at later, cognitively controlled stages of processing. This paper discussed the defensive characteristics of negative emotion processing of avoidant attachment. Automatic vigilance followed by effortful inhibition as a cognitive defense for avoidant attachment to processing the threaten-related signals, which is expressed in a specific dual-process model of avoidant defenses included vigilance in early automatic process and avoidance in later controlled process. The evidences from various behavioral experimental paradigms included emoticon mimicry task, morph task, perceptual threshold task, as well as emotional cueing task provided support for the point of view that attachment avoidant individuals have the capacity to detect the threaten related information in certain circumstance in the early stage of information processing. This characteristic was also proved by the evidences from event-related potentials (ERP) components, which are mainly reflected in more strong amplitude in attention vigilance related components (N1, P2) and early components related to visual features-based emotion processing when presented negative emotion information in attachment avoidant individuals. However, individuals with avoidant attachment style processed negative emotion with attention inhibition at the cognitively controlled level of processing. The avoidant individual’ tendency to “smiling” in response to the angry face at the controlled level was interpreted as a repression of their earlier, automatically evoked negative emotional reaction. Coincidentally, consistent with the proposal that avoidant individuals limit attention to potentially distressing information, attachment avoidance was associated with reductions in emotional Stroop (ES) interference for threatening related stimulus. These individuals exhibited limited cognitive resources which were devoted in this phase. The evidences from functional magnetic resonance imaging showed that during the processing of negative emotion, these individuals with attachment avoidant exhibited more strong activities in brain region in charge of advanced cognitive and control function, such as the right hemisphere superior frontal gyms (rSFG), the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), the orbital frontal cortex (OFC) and so on. It can be explained that effectively avoiding processing threaten related information is based on the heightened state of vigilance for attachment avoidance. The defense strategy of attachment avoidance was considered as a secondary strategy with cognitive effort to sustain in later stage of emotion information processing. This characteristic of cognitive resource consumption made the strategy ineffective when the cognitive resource deficit. Future studies can further explore the causal basis for the relationship between avoidant attachment and vigilance-inhibi- tion attention pattern, pay attention to the impact of defensive emotional processing on individual health and the maintain of intimate relationship, explore the neural mechanism and effectiveness of the deactivation strategy and further study the application of avoid defense in clinical treatment to provide new inspiration for the treatment of attachment disorder and related clinical strategies.

Regional Frontal Lobe Response Magnitudes During Affective Shifting Covary With Resting Heart Rate Variability in Healthy Volunteers

Abstract. We hypothesized that in healthy subjects differences in resting heart rate variability (rHRV) would be associated with differences in emotional reactivity within the medial visceromotor network (MVN). We also probed whether this MVN-rHRV relationship was diminished in depression. Eleven healthy adults and nine depressed subjects performed the emotional counting stroop task in alternating blocks of emotion and neutral words during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The correlation between rHRV outside the scanner and BOLD signal reactivity (absolute value of change between adjacent blocks in the BOLD signal) was examined in specific MVN regions. Significant negative correlations were observed between rHRV and average BOLD shift magnitude (BSM) in several MVN regions in healthy subjects but not depressed subjects. This preliminary report provides novel evidence relating emotional reactivity in MVN regions to rHRV. It also provides preliminary suggestive evidence that depression may involve reduced interaction between the MVN and cardiac vagal control.

EL PARADIGMA STROOP EMOCIONAL EN EL ESTUDIO DEL PROCESAMIENTO COGNITIVO DE LA CONTRAPUBLICIDAD DEL TABACO

Abstract:THE EMOTIONAL STROOP PARADIGM IN THE STUDY OF TOBACCO COUNTERPUBLICITY COGNITIVE PROCESSINGThe aim of this work is to analyze the attentional and mnesic processing of words related to smoking and health using the emotional stroop paradigm and a bigram completing task. A modified stroop task consisting of three types of words: neutral, smoking related words and health related words extracted from health warnings messages presented in smoking publicity, was given to a sample integrated by smokers, non-smokers and former-smokers. The individuals performed then an implicit memory task. The results obtained indicated that the health related words are not preferentially attended by the smokers. However, they complete more bigrams with tobacco words than the other groups. The relevance of this memory bias in the context of smoking counterpublicity and of stop-smoking therapy is discussed.Keywords: emotional stroop paradigm, implicit memory, health warnings, smokers.Resumen:Este trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar el procesamiento atencional y mnésico de palabras relacionadas con el tabaco y con la salud utilizando el paradigma stroop emocional y una tarea de completar bigramas. A una muestra formada por fumadores, no fumadores y exfumadores se administró una tarea stroop modificada compuesta por tres tipos de palabras: neutras, palabras relacionadas con el consumo de tabaco y palabras relacionadas con la salud, extraídas de los mensajes de advertencia sanitaria que aparecen en la publicidad del tabaco. Posteriormente se aplicó una prueba de memoria implícita. Los resultados mostraron que las palabras relacionadas con los riesgos del tabaco para la salud no son atendidas de forma preferente por los fumadores y sin embargo completan más bigramas con palabras tabaco que el resto de los grupos. Se discute la relevancia de este estudio en el ámbito de la contrapublicidad y en las terapias de deshabituación del tabaco.Palabras clave: paradigma stroop emocional, memoria implícita, advertencias sanitarias, fumadores.