Preattentive bias for snake words in snake phobia?

Stroop interference and skin conductance responses (SCRs) for words related to snakes, spiders, flowers, and mushrooms were studied in a group of women (n=40) with snake phobia who were randomised to a stress or no-stress condition. The 21 low-stress snake phobics showed Stroop interference for unmasked (but not for masked) snake words, compared with 21 age- and sex-matched controls. Stroop interference was not significantly different between high-stress and low-stress snake phobics. No support for stronger SCRs for masked snake words was found in snake phobics in a lexical decision task with masked presentations of the same words. The lack of a masked Stroop interference in snake phobics suggests a possible difference in cognitive-emotional mechanisms underlying specific phobia vs. other anxiety disorders that deserves further investigation.     

社交焦虑个体对于不同威胁信息的注意偏向

目的:研究社交焦虑个体对不同类型词语的注意偏向。方法:被试41名,采用情绪Stroop范式,研究词与非词不同比例条件下高低社交焦虑个体对不同类型词(被关注词、被评价词、躯体威胁性词、中性词和非词)的注意偏向。结果:在词和非词比例高的条件下,高社交焦虑组在负性评价词和受他人关注词上的Stroop效应显著大于低社交焦虑组。结论:高社交焦虑个体对负性评价和他人关注的词语存在注意偏向。     

Cognitive bias via the Internet: a comparison of Web-based and standard emotional Stroop tasks in social phobia

There is accumulating evidence to suggest that social phobia is associated with attentional bias for words related to social threat. Information processing in individuals with social phobia (n = 87) was investigated in the present study using 2 versions of the emotional Stroop task. Results from a standard emotional Stroop task indicated delayed colour naming of socially threatening words relative to neutral words, in line with previous research, whereas results from a Web-based emotional Stroop task indicated a facilitation effect, with faster manual indication of colour choice for socially threatening words than for neutral words. Possible explanations for these contrasting findings and issues for further research are discussed.     

Cognitive Bias Via the Internet: A Comparison of Web‐Based and Standard Emotional Stroop Tasks in Social Phobia

There is accumulating evidence to suggest that social phobia is associated with attentional bias for words related to social threat. Information processing in individuals with social phobia (n = 87) was investigated in the present study using 2 versions of the emotional Stroop task. Results from a standard emotional Stroop task indicated delayed colour naming of socially threatening words relative to neutral words, in line with previous research, whereas results from a Web‐based emotional Stroop task indicated a facilitation effect, with faster manual indication of colour choice for socially threatening words than for neutral words. Possible explanations for these contrasting findings and issues for further research are discussed.     

Attentional bias and anxiety in individuals with coronary heart disease

This study examined whether in an emotional Stroop task, individuals with coronary heart disease (CHD) would show greater attention towards the threatening words related to their disease than healthy persons, and if such an attentional bias is associated with anxiety. An emotional Stroop task with threatening words related to CHD as well as positive, negative and neutral words was administered to 35 individuals with CHD and 35 healthy controls. Additionally, the original Stroop task, the Beck anxiety inventory and the state-trait anxiety inventory were administered. The results indicated an attentional bias towards threatening words related to CHD in the individuals with CHD. They experienced higher interference than healthy participants from threatening words related to CHD but not from positive or negative words. Moreover, the level of interference was associated with their level of anxiety, and a vicious circle may exist in this association. In addition, results indicated a possible deficit of executive functioning among individuals with CHD. Attentional bias, as well as its association with anxiety, and an indication of deficit in executive functioning among individuals with CHD might be the risk factors for these individuals’ quality of life and for further development of their disease.     

Using the Personal Stroop to Detect Children's Awareness of Social Rejection by Peers

A personal (or emotional) Stroop methodology was used to assess children's internalisation of peer rejection. A computerised Stroop colour-naming task with a voice-activated timer was given to 59 socially popular and unpopular elementary schoolchildren. We presented negative social words and three sets of control words (positive social, negative nonsocial, and positive nonsocial) individually and in random order. Unpopular children (but not popular children) demonstrated significantly greater colour-naming interference on negative social words versus control words, suggesting that they had internalised personally relevant social status information. This sensitivity to negative social content words remained even after controlling for grade level, self-reported depressive symptoms, and self-reported social competence. Advantages and disadvantages of the personal Stroop methodology relative to self-report methodologies are discussed.     

Perfectionism and self-consciousness in social phobia and panic disorder with agoraphobia.

Social phobics were compared to patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia and normal controls on perfectionism and self-consciousness. On concern over mistakes and doubts about action, social phobics scored higher than patients with panic disorder. Social phobics also demonstrated a higher level of public self-consciousness than patients with panic disorder and when this difference was controlled for the significant differences on perfectionism disappeared. Within each patient group, however, perfectionism was more robustly related to social anxiety than was public self-consciousness, which replicates the findings of Saboonchi and Lundh [Saboonchi, F. & Lundh, L. G. (1997). Perfectionism, self-consciousness and anxiety. Personality and Individual Differences, 22, 921-928.] from a non-clinical sample. The results are discussed in terms of public self-consciousness being a differentiating characteristic of the more severe kind of social anxiety which is typical of social phobia.     

Attentional Bias,Self-consciousness and Perfectionism in Social Phobia Before and After Cognitive-Behaviour Therapy

Attentional bias for threat words (as measured by the emotional Stroop task), selfconsciousness and perfectionism was studied in 24 patients with social phobia before and after cognitive-behaviour treatment. A total of 18 (75%) of the patients were classified as treatment responders on the basis of reduced scores for social anxiety. The treatment responders showed a significant reduction in attentional bias for social threat words, in public self-consciousness and in perfectionism. The non-responders showed an equal reduction in perfectionism; as they had a much higher level of perfectionism before treatment, however, their change only amounted to a lowering of their level of perfectionism to the level that characterized the treatment responders before treatment. The treatment responders, on the other hand, reduced their level of perfectionism to that of non-clinical samples.     

Attachment anxiety and attentional control predict immediate and delayed emotional Stroop interference

Attachment anxiety has been associated with a hyperactivating response to threat. A modified emotional Stroop task was used to investigate temporal characteristics of the threat response by assessing response latencies to interpersonally threatening words (immediate interference) and two directly subsequent neutral filler words (delayed interference). Greater immediate and delayed interference to threatening words was observed (n = 125), with higher levels of attachment anxiety associated with immediate interference to threatening cues, and lower levels with delayed interference. Thus, attachment anxiety was related to the speed at which moderate perceived threat disrupted ongoing processes under top-down attentional control. Furthermore, top-down attentional control moderated the extent to which immediate or delayed interference was observed. Among participants who demonstrated relatively stronger top-down attentional control, immediate and delayed interference to threatening cues was minimal, suggesting that results involving emotional Stroop interference were primarily attributable to participants with relatively weaker top-down attentional control. The implications of these findings are considered within the broader context of performance-based and neuroimaging research, with suggestions for future applied research.     

Written threat: Electrophysiological evidence for an attention bias to affective words in social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is associated with heightened sensitivity to threat cues, typically represented by emotional facial expressions. To examine if this bias can be transferred to a general hypersensitivity or whether it is specific to disorder relevant cues, we investigated electrophysiological correlates of emotional word processing (alpha activity and event-related potentials) in 20 healthy participants and 20 participants with SAD. The experimental task was a silent reading of neutral, positive, physically threatening and socially threatening words (the latter were abusive swear words) while responding to a randomly presented dot. Subsequently, all participants were asked to recall as many words as possible during an unexpected recall test. Participants with SAD showed blunted sensory processing followed by a rapid processing of emotional words during early stages (early posterior negativity – EPN). At later stages, all participants showed enhanced processing of negative (physically and socially threatening) compared to neutral and positive words (N400). Moreover, at later processing stages alpha activity was increased specifically for negative words in participants with SAD but not in healthy controls. Recall of emotional words for all subjects was best for socially threatening words, followed by negative and positive words irrespective of social anxiety. The present findings indicate that SAD is associated with abnormalities in emotional word processing characterised by early hypervigilance to emotional cues followed by cognitive avoidance at later processing stages. Most importantly, the specificity of these attentional biases seems to change as a function of time with a general emotional bias at early and a more specific bias at later processing stages.     

Attentional bias and evoked heart-rate response in specific phobia

The relationship between the evoked heart-rate (HR) reaction to phobic pictures and the attentional bias was investigated in specific phobics. Forty-five specific phobic and 39 control participants were shown phobia-related pictures while HR was being recorded; they were administered the modified dot-probe task, the modified Stroop task, and gave subjective ratings of pictures. Unlike control participants, specific phobics showed HR acceleration to phobia-related pictures, which was significantly correlated with their fear ratings, and a significant Stroop interference effect. There were no group differences with regard to an attentional bias in the dot-probe task but early deceleration of the HR reaction to phobic pictures was related to more pronounced selective attention toward these stimuli in phobics. The results provide partial support for Cook and Turpin's (1997) conjecture of a relationship between the early decelerative orienting component of the HR reaction and the selective attentional bias in phobia.     

Self‐oriented perfectionism and its relationship to selective attention: An experimental examination using social cognitive paradigm1

The cognitive biases associated with perfectionism include a selective attention to failure and the discounting of success. The present study experimentally focused on the relation between self‐oriented perfectionism (SOP) and selective attention using the social cognitive paradigm. Forty undergraduate students who were identified as either high or low in SOP were asked to perform modified versions of the Stroop task. The results suggest that participants with high SOP did not take longer to respond to failure words than to neutral words, but their reaction time to failure words was longer than that of participants with low SOP. These findings provided the basis for cognitive behavioral biases for perfectionism.     

Individual differences in children's performance during an emotional Stroop task: a behavioral and electrophysiological study

Two studies using the emotional Stroop with 11-year-old children were completed. In Study 1, children were assigned to either the "interference group" or the "facilitation group" based on their performance on the task. The interference group was slower to respond to emotion words (positive and negative) versus control words. The facilitation group was faster to respond to the emotion words. The groups were then compared on a set of cognitive, emotional, and social measures collected at ages 4, 7, and 11. The interference group showed greater signs of emotional and social, but not cognitive, maladjustment across time. Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1. In addition, event-related potentials (ERPs) were collected in Study 2. The ERP data replicated earlier traditional Stroop studies. In addition, positive and negative words showed differences in processing across components. In particular, negative words appeared to tax attentional and processing resources more than positive words.     

The colour naming of socially threatening words

An emotional Stroop task was used to investigate colour naming of socially threatening words in individuals who possess a repressive coping style. The Marlowe-Crowne scale (MC) and the Bendig version of the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS) were used to select repressor and control subjects, who subsequently completed the Stroop task. Repressors (high MC, low MAS) did not show an emotional Stroop effect, whereas low anxious (low MC, low MAS), high anxious (low MC, high MAS) and defensive high anxious (high MC, high MAS) all exhibited retarded colour naming of emotional words compared with neutral words. These results are discussed in terms of previous research in this area.     

Verbal coding and the elimination of Stroop interference in a matching task

Translational models of the Stroop effect (Virzi & Egeth, 1985) predict that Stroop interference can be eliminated if subjects can be induced to process target colors using a coding system separate from the coding system used to process distractors. This hypothesis was tested in two experiments. In the first experiment, we attempted to eliminate the need for subjects to translate target colors to verbal codes when responding to Stroop stimuli. Before responding to verbal incongruent color word distractors, subjects practiced matching colors to irregular shapes. It was expected that subjects would use nonverbal codes to mediate responding in this task. After practice, subjects continued the matching task in the presence of incongruent color words. Stroop interference persisted, contrary to predictions. Because subjects reported adopting verbal strategies to perform the matching task, Experiment 2 was designed to control the verbal coding strategies that subjects employed. Before responding to Stroop distractor stimuli, subjects in the nonsense name group practiced using nonsense names to mediate the matching of shapes to colors; subjects in the actual name group used actual color names to mediate performance in the matching task. When incongruent color word distractors were introduced, Stroop interference was eliminated for subjects in the nonsense name group, but persisted for subjects in the actual name group. The results are interpreted as consistent with an outcome conflict (Navon & Miller, 1987) or a modified translational model of the Stroop effect.     

The influence of mere social presence on Stroop interference: New evidence from the semantically-based Stroop task

Several studies have shown that mere social presence reduces Stroop interference but processes underlying such effect are still poorly understood. Given that the standard Stroop task used in those studies confounds semantic and response competition, it remains unclear whether Stroop words are processed normally (Sharma, Booth, Brown, & Huguet, 2010) or whether the processing of their semantic representations is altered (Huguet, Galvaing, Monteil, & Dumas, 1999, Exp. 1). The direct evidence from the semantically-based Stroop task (i.e., a task that is free of response competition and thus isolates the semantic component of the Stroop interference, Neely & Kahan, 2001) provided in this paper attests normal semantic processing. Such result refutes the idea that semantic activation can be prevented or controlled by social presence and thus adds to the growing body of evidence showing that semantic activation is indeed automatic. Also importantly, this paper offers an alternative explanation of past findings, which holds that social presence simply reduces the response competition that occurs in the standard Stroop task and sheds some light on the processes that underlie social-facilitating effects of mere presence in the Stroop task.     

Dimensions of Perfectionism,Hopelessness, and Attempted Suicide in a Sample of Alcoholics

This study assessed whether specific dimensions of perfectionism and hopelessness were elevated in individuals who had made a serious suicide attempt in comparison to individuals with no history of suicide attempts. A sample of 39 inpatients with alcoholism who had made a serious suicide attempt and a matched sample of 39 inpatients with alcoholism but no history of suicide attempts completed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Hopelessness Scale, ratings of achievement and social hopelessness, and the Beck Depression Inventory. The attempter group had higher scores on socially prescribed perfectionism, generalized hopelessness, achievement hopelessness, social hopelessness, and depression. A discriminant function analysis revealed that depression, social hopelessness, socially prescribed perfectionism, and other-oriented perfectionism were unique discriminators of the suicide groups. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of social personality variables in attempted suicide.     

Is defensiveness associated with cognitive bias away from emotional information?

The role of defensiveness and repressive coping style for the performance on a combined emotional Stroop and tachistoscopic identification task with masked and unmasked words was studied in a community sample. Defensiveness was associated with a decrease in Stroop interference for masked threat words, but not for unmasked threat words. The most robust results, however, were found with regard to overall test performance (independent of emotional valence). On the emotional Stroop task, high-defensive men (but not women) were faster to colour-name words in general, irrespective of emotional valence. On the tachistoscopic identification task, high-defensive women identified fewer words in general than low-defensive participants. The results are discussed in terms of defensiveness being associated with (a) avoidance of emotional information at an automatic, pre-attentive level, and (b) a general avoidance of potentially emotional information that takes different form in men and women depending on possible differences in what is seen as socially desirable for the two genders.     

Abstracts

Two studies were designed to establish whether high anxiety sensitive (AS) university students selectively process threat cues pertaining to their feared catastrophic consequences of anxiety, and to examine potential gender differences in the selective processing of such threat cues among high versus low AS subjects. Forty students (20 M; 20 F) participated in Study 1. Half were high AS and half low AS, according to scores on the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI). Subjects completed a computerised Stroop colournaming task involving social/psychological threat (e.g. EMBARRASS; CRAZY), physical threat (e.g. CORONARY; SUFFOCATED), and neutral (e.g. MOTEL; TOWEL) target words. High AS subjects demonstrated more threat-related interference in colour-naming than did low AS subjects, overall. High AS menevidencedgreater interference relative to low AS men only for the social/psychological threat stimuli; highAS women evidencedgreater interference relative to low AS women only for the physical threat stimuli. Study 2 was designed to replicate and extend the novel Study 1 finding of a cognitive bias favouring the processing of social/psychological threat cues among high AS men. Participants were 20 male university students (10 high AS; 10 low AS). In addition to social/psychological threat, physical threat, and neutral words, a category of positive emotional words (e.g. HAPPINESS; CELEBRATION) was included as a supplementary control on the Stroop. Consistent with Study 1, high AS males evidenced greater Stroop interference than did low AS males, but only for social/psychological threat words. No AS group differences in Stroop interference were revealed for the physical threat or positive words. Clinical implications, and potential theoretical explanations for the gender differences, are discussed.     

Preattentive bias for emotional information in panic disorder with agoraphobia.

A combined emotional Stroop and implicit memory (tachistoscopic identification) task with 3 types of words (panic-related, interpersonal threat, and neutral words) and 2 exposure conditions (subliminal, supraliminal) was administered to 35 patients with panic disorder and 35 age- and sex-matched controls. The patients showed Stroop interference for panic-related words both sub- and supraliminally and a similar but not equally robust effect on interpersonal threat words. On the tachistoscopic identification task, the patients identified more panic-related words than the controls did but showed no implicit memory bias effect. The patients' subliminal Stroop interference for panic-related words was found to correlate with trait anxiety and depression, although not with anxiety sensitivity.