THE EMOTIONAL STROOP TASK:

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• THE EMOTIONAL STROOP TASK
• DO INHIBITION DEFICITS IMPAIR OLDER ADULTS
  ABILITY TO IGNORE EMOTIONAL WORDS?
• Gabrielle Osborne
• Claremont Graduate University
• Deborah Burke and Lillian May
• Pomona College
• Cognitive Aging Conference, April, 2006

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Emotional processing well maintained in old age

• Older adults are adept at regulating emotions
• Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST) older
  adults seek emotionally gratifying experiences by
  focusing on positive information and avoiding
  negative information more than young adults
  (e.g., Carstensen, Isaacowitz, Charles, 1999
  Carstensen Mikels, 2005 Mather Carstensen,
  2003).

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Cognitive processes in the service of emotion
Age deficits?

• Resilience to aging declines- Memory. For
  example
• Mikels, Larkin, Reuter-Lorenz Carstensen
  (2005) Better working memory performance for
  older than young adults when positive emotional
  pictures are involved.
• May, Rahhal, Berry Leighton (2005) Age
  declines in memory for context were eliminated
  when the contextual information was emotional.

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Selective attention Does emotion affect
inhibitory processes in older adults?

• Inhibition Deficit model Inhibition becomes less
  efficient with aging, impairing, for example,
  selective attention in older adults
• Stroop interference increases with age and some
  researchers attribute this to age-linked
  inhibition deficits (e.g., Spieler, Balota
  Faust, 1996)
• Stroop task proposed as an index of inhibition
  efficiency

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Emotion Stroop

• Emotional words produce greater interference than
  neutral words.
• in normal participants
• In participants suffering from e.g., high
  anxiety, depression or phobia for self-relevant
  words.
• Generally found for negative not positive
  basewords (McKenna ( Sharma, 1995).

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Emotion Stroop and aging?

• Wurm, Labouvie-Vief, Aycock, Rebucal and Koch
  (2004)
• Old but not young showed increased Stroop
  interference for high arousal basewords (e.g.,
  killer).
• Suggests emotional stimuli do not ameliorate
  hypothesized inhibition deficits.
• No emotion Stroop effect for young adults?
• Older adults less able to suppress negative
  emotion words?

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Present Study

• Manipulated baseword valence
• Tested Stroop interference and incidental memory
  for basewords

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Experiment 1 Manipulated valence of basewords

• Basewords 24 positive valence
• 24 negative valence
• 24 neutral (household items)
• Valence based on ratings by young and older
  adults
• Matched on frequency
• of syllables
• of letters
• Basewords appeared in red, green, blue or brown

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Mean valence ratings for basewords (1 very
negative, 7 very positive)
Older adults gt young adults on ratings, p lt .05
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Experiment 1 Procedure

• Presentation blocked by valence- 8 basewords per
  block and blocks in random order.
• Instructions Ignore the word and name the color
  as quickly as possible.
• Basewords appeared twice-- 144 trials
• After completion of Stroop trials, free recall of
  basewords
• Rating of basewords on valence

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HAPPY
Red
12
EVIL
Blue
13
TABLE
Green
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Participant Characteristics

• Young Old
• n 36 36
• Age (years) 19.4 73.2
• Vocabulary 34.1 36.2
• (Shipley)
• All participants native English speakers and in
  good health.
• p lt .05

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Color naming latencies by age and baseword
valence
800
742
750
731
728
negative
positive
Response Time (ms)
700
neutral
650
628
617
620
600
550
YOUNG
OLD
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Correct recall by age and baseword valence
4
3.5
negative
3
positive
2.39
2.5
2.06
neutral
Total Basewords Recalled
2
1.31
1.5
1.14
1.08
1
No significant Age effect
0.64
0.5
0
OLD
YOUNG
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Experiment 1Conclusions

• Magnitude and pattern of Stroop interference did
  not differ for young and older adults
• Stroop interference for negative valence
  basewords gt neutral or positive basewords, which
  did not differ.
• Consistent with previous findings of emotion
  Stroop for young adults and extends them to older
  adults
• Inconsistent with Wurm et al. (2004) who reported
  greater interference for high arousal basewords
  for old but not young adults
• No evidence for a positivity bias in latency or
  recall. Suggests that bias towards positive in
  other tasks depends on conscious controlled
  processing

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Could valence effects reflect differences in
arousal between positive and negative basewords?
Arousal not matched in E1

• Mean arousal rating for emotional basewords (ANEW
  norms, Bradley Lang, 1999).
• Positive lt Negative
• Experiment 2 controlled level of arousal to
  determine if the emotion Stroop effect for
  negative stimuli was due to greater arousal.

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Mean arousal ratings for basewords(9 point
scale)
1 The ANEW system did not contain ratings for all
the Neutral items
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Mean valence ratings for basewords (1 very
negative, 7 very positive)
1 The ANEW system did not contain ratings for all
the Neutral items
plt.05 Older adults rated these basewords higher
on the valence scale than young adults
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Color naming latencies by age and baseword
valence
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Recall by age and baseword valence
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Summary and ConclusionsAge effects

• In both experiments, young and older adults
  showed the same pattern of negative emotion
  Stroop effects and better memory for negative
  emotion words.
• No evidence for age-related inhibition deficits.
• Inhibition in the service of emotion regulation
  is immune to age deficits

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Summary and ConclusionsValence effects

• No evidence for a positivity bias in latency or
  recall.
• Bias towards positive in other attention and
  memory tasks depends on conscious, strategic
  processing that is eliminated in Stroop selective
  attention
• Processing of negative emotional stimuli is more
  automatic and intrusive relative to positive
  stimuli

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Osborne, Burke Clausen, 2006
Blue
Negative condition
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Osborne, Burke Clausen, 2006
Brown
Negative_neutral condition
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Osborne, Burke Clausen, 2006
Red
Positive condition
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Osborne, Burke Clausen, 2006
Green
Positive_neutral condition
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Experiment 1Results


plt.01 latencies were slower for negative than
negative_neutral trials
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