Cognitive bias,emotion, and somatic complaints in a normal sample

Cognitive bias (Stroop interference and implicit memory bias) for masked and unmasked threat words (illness words and negative emotion words) was investigated for its associations with emotion (anxiety, anger/aggression, and positive affect) and somatic complaints in a randomly selected community sample of 138 individuals. Because measures of cognitive bias are inherently bipolar, the data were tested for both linear and curvilinear trends. Cross-sectional analysis showed that the associations between somatic anxiety and Stroop interference for unmasked threat words were better described in terms of curvilinear than linear models, and that degree of somatic complaints was associated with Stroop facilitation for masked threat words. Longitudinal analysis showed that Stroop interference for masked threat words predicted lack of positive affect during an ensuing eight weeks daily recording period. Implicit memory bias was found to be negatively associated with measures of anger/aggression, both in the cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses. We suggest that: (a) cognitive bias should be treated as a bipolar construct in future research; (b) the phenomenon of Stroop facilitation for threat words deserves further exploration; and (c) more research should address the question about the relationship between cognitive bias and other emotions than anxiety (e.g., positive affect and anger).     

The experience of positive emotion is associated with the automatic processing of positive emotional words

The current study examines the relationship between attention bias for positive emotional words and self-reported emotional experience. Previous research suggests that the experience of positive emotion momentarily broadens cognitive processes, potentially allowing individuals to build an array of enduring personal resources. However, it is unknown whether the experience of positive emotion also broadens emotional information processing. Participants included 60 healthy undergraduate students who completed measures of psychopathology, self-reported emotional experience, and an emotional Stroop task designed to measure attentional bias to positive and negative emotional information. Results indicate significant associations between reaction times for high-intensity happiness words and self-reported high levels of positive emotion and low levels of negative emotions. These associations were not present for low intensity happiness words. Findings suggest that individuals who experience high levels of positive emotion and low levels of negative emotion demonstrate an attention bias for positive information and, from an information processing perspective, provide insight into the manner in which positive emotions broaden cognitive processes.     

Counter-regulation triggered by emotions: Positive/negative affective states elicit opposite valence biases in affective processing

The present study investigated whether counter-regulation in affective processing is triggered by emotions. Automatic attention allocation to valent stimuli was measured in the context of positive and negative affective states. Valence biases were assessed by comparing the detection of positive versus negative words in a visual search task (Experiment 1) or by comparing interference effects of positive and negative distractor words in an emotional Stroop task (Experiment 2). Imagining a hypothetical emotional situation (Experiment 1) or watching romantic versus depressing movie clips (Experiment 2) increased attention allocation to stimuli that were opposite in valence to the current emotional state. Counter-regulation is assumed to reflect a basic mechanism underlying implicit emotion regulation.     

职前教师情绪觉察能力对情绪信息注意偏向的影响

采用修订的情绪觉察水平量表（LEAS）对315名职前教师进行调查,并从中筛选出高、低情绪觉察能力组被试各60人,分别完成情绪面孔Stroop任务（研究1）和情绪词Stroop任务（研究2）。（1）研究1的正确率上,中性面孔最高,愉快面孔次之,悲伤面孔最差;反应时上,悲伤面孔最长,愉快面孔次之,中性面孔最短;高分组仅在愉快和中性面孔上的反应时长于低分组;消极面孔的干扰效应高于积极面孔的干扰效应。（2）研究2的反应时上,消极词的反应时最长,显著长于中性和积极词;高分组仅在积极词和中性词上的反应时长于低分组,且高分组在积极词上的干扰效应高于低分组。研究结果表明与中性刺激相比,高低情绪觉察能力组均对情绪刺激产生了注意偏向,尤其是负性情绪刺激;与低情绪觉察能力组相比,高情绪觉察能力职前教师不仅对消极情绪信息产生注意偏向,还对积极情绪信息产生注意偏向。     

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.     

PTSD青少年执行功能缺陷的情绪特异性

已有研究表明PTSD青少年存在执行功能缺陷,但尚不清楚这种缺陷是否具有情绪特异性。以2008年汶川地震重灾区汉旺中学PTSD、非PTSD以及非灾区青少年各28名为被试,探讨震后PTSD青少年执行功能缺陷是否具有情绪特异性。实验1采用经典Stroop范式,结果发现3组被试的Stroop效应量无显著差异;实验2采用情绪Stroop范式,结果发现PTSD组对地震信息的Stroop效应量显著大于非PTSD组和控制组。整个研究表明,震后PTSD青少年的执行功能缺陷具有情绪特异性。     

An emotional Stroop task with faces and words. A comparison of young and older adults

AntecedentsGiven the contradictions of previous studies on the changes in attentional responses produced in aging a Stroop emotional task was proposed to compare young and older adults to words or faces with an emotional valence.MethodThe words happy or sad were superimposed on faces that express the emotion of happiness or sadness. The emotion expressed by the word and the face could agree or not (cued and uncued trials, respectively). 85 young and 66 healthy older adults had to identify both faces and words separately, and the interference between the two types of stimuli was examined.ResultsAn interference effect was observed for both types of stimuli in both groups. There was more interference on positive faces and words than on negative stimuli.ConclusionsOlder adults had more difficulty than younger in focusing on positive uncued trials, whereas there was no difference across samples on negative uncued trials.     

The lateralized emotional stroop task: left visual field interference in women

In a visual hemifield emotional Stroop task, 54 women were asked to name the color of laterally flashed emotional and neutral words while ignoring their semantic content. Vocal reaction times for color naming were recorded. The participants exhibited significant emotional interference effects in the left visual field, which tended to be larger for negative words than for positive words. Participants with higher trait anxiety scores exhibited larger interference for positive words in the left relative to the right visual field. The outcome indicates that, in women, emotional Stroop interference arises in the right rather than in the left hemisphere, with a larger impact of negative than of positive words, and with trait anxiety modulating the lateralized interference for positive words.     

Seeking the source of emotional Stroop interference effects in PTSD: A study of P3s to traumatic words

We investigated the source of emotional Stroop interference effects in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by measuring reaction times and P3 latencies and amplitudes to personal traumatic, personal positive, and neutral words in a modified Stroop paradigm. Individuals with PTSD were slower to indicate word color, especially for traumatic words, thereby replicating emotional Stroop interference in PTSD. Individuals with PTSD also had significantly reduced and delayed P3 components across word types. Across diagnostic groups, frontal P3 amplitudes were larger to personal positive and traumatic words compared to standard neutral words. However, the absence of Diagnosis x Word Type interactions for P3 measures suggests that individuals with PTSD do not differ from individuals without PTSD in the encoding and recognition of the color of traumatic relative to nontraumatic words, and that Stroop interference does not occur during these early stages of processing.     

Investigating hemispheric specialization in a novel face-word Stroop task

We examined hemispheric specialization in a lateralized Stroop facial identification task. A 2 (presentation side: left or right visual field [LVF or RVF])x2 (picture emotion: happy or angry)x3 (emotion of distractor word: happy, angry, or blank) factorial design placed the right hemispheric specialization for emotional expression processing and the left hemispheric specialization for verbal processing in conflict. Faces (from ) and emotion words were briefly displayed, and participants responded with keypresses corresponding to the picture emotion. As predicted, greater Stroop interference in identification accuracy was found with incongruent displays of facial expression in the LVF and emotion words in the RVF, and females exhibited less Stroop interference. Reaction times were moderated by emotion and visual field.     

焦虑个体“冷”、“热”执行功能Stroop效应量比较

该文采用Stroop实验范式对筛选出的49名高焦虑个体和48名低焦虑个体的“冷”、“热”执行功能进行测量,以探讨不同焦虑程度个体“冷”、“热”执行功能间的差异。结果表明,在“冷”执行功能方面,高焦虑个体与低焦虑个体Stroop效应量之间没有显著差异;在“热”执行功能方面,两组被试情绪Stroop的效应量无差异;两类词;12的Stroop效应量差异显著;词汇类型×被试类型的交互作用非常显著;进一步的简单效应分析表明,两组被试的情绪Stroop效应量在消极词汇水平差异显著,两类词汇Stroop效应量在低焦虑组差异显著。说明高、低焦虑个体在“冷”执行功能上没有显著差异,高焦虑个体的“冷”执行功能正常,而“热”执行功能下降,表现为高焦虑个体对两极情绪的趋避关系失调,即对消极情绪具有偏向性,对积极情绪具有回避性。     

Increasing negative emotions by reappraisal enhances subsequent cognitive control: A combined behavioral and electrophysiological study

To what degree do cognitively based strategies of emotion regulation impact subsequent cognitive control? Here, we investigated this question by interleaving a cognitive task with emotion regulation trials, where regulation occurred through cognitive reappraisal. In addition to obtaining self-reports of emotion regulation, we used the late positive potential (LPP) of the event-related brain potential as an objective index of emotion regulation. On each trial, participants maintained, decreased, or increased their emotional response to an unpleasant picture and then responded to a Stroop stimulus. Results revealed that (1) the magnitude of the LPP was decreased with reappraisal instructions to decrease negative emotion and were enhanced with reappraisal instructions to increase negative emotion; (2) after cognitive reappraisal was used to increase the intensity of negative emotion, RT interference in the subsequent Stroop trial was significantly reduced; and (3) increasing negative emotions by reappraisal also modulated the cognitive control-related sustained potential. These results suggest that increasing negative emotions by cognitive reappraisal heightens cognitive control, which may be sustained for a short time after the regulation event.     

Inhibitory control and affective valence processing in dementia of the alzheimer type

Emotional and traditional Stroop effects were contrasted in individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and age‐equated, non‐demented individuals to examine (a) differences in the speed of processing emotional versus neutral words; and (b) the extent to which the emotional valence influences interference effects. Individuals with moderate AD experienced larger traditional Stroop interference effects than did healthy elderly or individuals with mild AD. Emotional Stroop effects were evident among individuals with moderate AD and significantly greater than elderly and individuals with mild AD who exhibited minimal effects. For negative words, significant differences were only observed between individuals with moderate AD and healthy elderly. Emotional Stroop effects among individuals with AD were not statistically different for positive and negative words. The impact of stimulus intensity level and AD‐associated changes to the prefrontal cortex and amygdala on emotional Stroop effects requires further investigation.     

Emotion Socialization in Families of Children With an Anxiety Disorder

Compared emotion socialization in 26 children with anxiety disorders ages 8–12 years and their mothers to 26 nonclinical counterparts without psychopathology. Children and their mothers participated in an emotion interaction task in which they discussed occasions when the child felt worry, sadness, and anger. Responses were coded for length of discussion, proportion of words spoken by child vs. mother, frequency of positive and negative emotion words, explanatory discussion of emotion, and maternal facilitation of emotion discussion. Children and their mothers also completed the Expressiveness and Control scales of the Family Environment Scale. Results indicated that mothers of children with an anxiety disorder spoke less frequently than their child, used significantly fewer positive emotion words, and discouraged their childrens emotion discussions more than did mothers of nonclinical children. Nonclinical children and their mothers indicated significantly more emotional expressiveness in their families than did children with an anxiety disorder and their mothers. These results highlight the potential role of truncated family emotional expressivity in the emotional development and functioning of children with an anxiety disorder.     

Inducing a Stroop Effect

We examine the conditions that lead to Stroop interference for a meaningless linguistic label. Tiffany's cognitive model of drug abuse implies that individuals will respond more slowly to drug‐related words compared to neutral words in an emotional Stroop task, because the former have many automatic associations (e.g. positive expectancies). To examine this proposal, we trained participants to associate a meaningless label with either one other word or several other words and examined the induced Stroop interference for these meaningless labels. In two experiments, and contrary to expectations from Tiffany's work, we observed greatest Stroop interference for the meaningless label with just one association. These results are discussed in terms of associative learning theory. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of anxiety and attention control on processing pictorial and linguistic emotional information

This study investigated the role of executive attention control in modulating selective processing of emotional information in anxiety. It was hypothesized that the combination of high anxiety and poor attention control would be associated with greater difficulty in ignoring task-irrelevant threat-related information. The study included both faces and words as stimuli. Cognitive interference effects were assessed using two emotional Stroop tasks: one with angry, fearful, happy and neutral faces, and one with threat-related, positive, and neutral words. An objective measure of attention control was obtained from the Attention network task. There were four participant groups with high/low trait anxiety and high/low attention control. Results indicated that the combination of high anxiety and poor attention control was associated with greater cognitive interference by emotional faces (including angry faces), compared to neutral faces. This interference effect was not evident in participants with high anxiety and high attentional control, or in low-anxious individuals. There was no evidence of associations between anxiety, attention control, and the interference effect of emotional words. Results indicate that high anxiety and poor attention control together predict enhanced processing of emotionally salient information, such as angry facial expressions. Implications for models of emotion processing are discussed.     

认知负载对基于动机的情绪刺激加工的影响

结合数数任务和情绪flanker任务,探究不同认知负载条件下,高低趋近动机对情绪刺激加工的影响。结果发现：高负载组中,高趋近动机条件下,对积极目标刺激的反应显著快于消极目标刺激;低趋近动机条件下,对消极目标刺激的反应显著快于积极目标刺激。且高负载组中,各条件下的反应大多都显著慢于低负载组。低负载组中没有发现各条件之间的差异。结果表明,高负载条件下,高趋近动机促进了积极情绪刺激的加工,低趋近动机促进了消极情绪刺激的加工,高负载在一定程度上阻碍了情绪刺激的加工。     

认知负载对基于动机的情绪刺激加工的影响

结合数数任务和情绪flanker任务,探究不同认知负载条件下,高低趋近动机对情绪刺激加工的影响。结果发现：高负载组中,高趋近动机条件下,对积极目标刺激的反应显著快于消极目标刺激;低趋近动机条件下,对消极目标刺激的反应显著快于积极目标刺激。且高负载组中,各条件下的反应大多都显著慢于低负载组。低负载组中没有发现各条件之间的差异。结果表明,高负载条件下,高趋近动机促进了积极情绪刺激的加工,低趋近动机促进了消极情绪刺激的加工,高负载在一定程度上阻碍了情绪刺激的加工。     

Emotion processing effects on interference resolution in working memory

The interaction between emotion and working memory maintenance, load, and performance has been investigated with mixed results. The effect of emotion on specific executive processes such as interference resolution, however, remains relatively unexplored. In this series of studies, we examine how emotion affects interference resolution processes within working memory by modifying the Recency-probes paradigm (Monsel, 1978) to include emotional and neutral stimuli. Reaction time differences were compared between interference and non-interference trials for neutral and emotional words (Studies 1 & 3) and pictures (Study 2). Our results indicate that trials using emotional stimuli show a relative decrease in interference compared with trials using neutral stimuli, suggesting facilitation of interference resolution in the former. Furthermore, both valence and arousal seem to interact to produce this facilitation effect. These findings suggest that emotion facilitates response selection amid interference in working memory.     

高善良特质在情绪调节行动控制中的内隐优势

基于善良特质在中国人人格修养中的重要价值, 本研究以情绪调节的行动控制理论为模型参照, 设计了三项行为实验检验善良特质的导向性与内隐情绪调节的关系。研究1采用Stroop任务, 比较高低善良被试判断人际关系词颜色时是否受到色词内容的干扰, 结果发现, 高(vs.低)善良被试对人际关系积极词更敏感; 研究2采用情绪调节内隐联想测验任务比较高低善良被试的情绪调节内隐态度差异, 结果发现高(vs.低)善良被试更倾向于采用控制型情绪调节方式调节情绪; 研究3在诱发被试负性情绪条件下, 采用面孔表情视觉搜索任务间接考察高低善良被试在内隐情绪修复效果上的差异, 结果显示高(vs.低)善良被试搜索愤怒背景下高兴面孔的速度更快。三项实验结果一致地表明, 高善良特质利他重感情的行动目的性在情绪调节的行动控制中具有内隐优势, 对积极的心理健康起促进作用。