Generalizability of carry-over effects in the emotional Stroop task

doi:10.1016/j.brat.2004.06.003

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Volume 43, Issue 6, June 2005, Pages 715-732

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2004.06.003 Get rights and content

Abstract

The emotional Stroop task has been the most widely used task to examine attentional bias to emotionally salient stimuli. In one format of this task, words are presented to participants in a mixed randomized or quasi-randomized sequence. Using a mixed smoking Stroop task, we have previously demonstrated that smokers are slower to respond to words which follow smoking-related words than words which follow neutral words. Here we show that this carry-over effect is present in heroin addicts—but not control subjects—in a heroin Stroop task, and in normal subjects in a stress Stroop task. Thus, the effect generalizes to other populations. In addition, an examination of the studies that have collected data from both mixed and blocked formats provides converging evidence for the presence of carry-over effects. We discuss the implications of the carry-over effect for research using the emotional Stroop task.

Section snippets

Study 1

Franken et al. (2000) examined attentional bias in heroin addicts ( $n = 21$ , mean age=31.5) and control participants ( $n = 33$ , mean age=34.8) using a mixed version of the Stroop task. The heroin addicts were abstinent inpatients from a clinical treatment center (mean time of current abstinence=9 weeks, SD=8.9). Franken et al. (2000) reported that heroin addicts, but not controls, were slower to color-name heroin-related words than neutral words in a supraliminal Stroop task.¹

Study 2

Sayette et al. (2001) investigated the stress-reducing effects of alcohol on a number of stress-relevant dependent measures, including a mixed version of a stress Stroop task. Social drinkers ( $N = 165$ , age range 21–28) completed the stress Stroop task after drinking alcohol or a placebo beverage. Stress was induced prior to task performance by asking participants to present a self-disclosing speech about their physical appearance. This speech was delivered immediately after completing the Stroop

Study 3

The trial-level analyses presented in Table 1, Table 2 (and those presented in Waters et al., 2003) constitute the most direct method to detect the presence of carry-over effects. An additional, indirect, method is to examine whether the pattern of data in the literature suggests the presence of carry-over effects. The most straightforward predictions can be derived from studies in which emotional Stroop performance was measured on both a blocked and mixed format in the same study. If

General discussion

We have previously reported that a carry-over effect is present in smokers using a mixed format of the smoking Stroop task (Waters et al., 2003). Here we have extended this finding in a number of ways. First, we have shown that heroin addicts, but not controls, exhibit a carry-over effect in a mixed heroin Stroop task (Study 1). Thus the carry-over effect appears robust across different types of addictions, and is sensitive to group. Second, we have shown that the effect can be observed in

Acknowledgement

This study was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA09918) awarded to Michael Sayette, and by a grant to the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO).

The syntax for implementing the mixed-level modeling in SAS is available on request.

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Trial-to-trial carryover effects on spatial attentional bias
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Visual Probe Tasks (VPTs) have been extensively used to measure spatial attentional biases, but as usually analysed, VPTs do not consider trial-to-trial carryover effects of probe location: Does responding to a probe on, e.g., the location of a threat cue affect the bias on the subsequent trial? The aim of the current study was to confirm whether this kind of carryover exists, using a novel task version, the diagonalized VPT, designed to focus on such trial-to-trial interactions. Two versions of the task were performed by a sample of college students. In one version cues were coloured squares; in the other, cues were threat-related and neutral images. Both versions included partially random positive or negative response feedback and varying Cue-Probe Intervals (200 or 600 ms). Carryover effects were found in both versions. Responding to a probe at the location of a cue of a given colour induced an attentional bias on the subsequent trial in the direction of that colour. Responding to a threat-related cue induced an attentional bias towards threat on the subsequent trial. The results provide evidence that trial-to-trial carryover effects on spatial attentional bias indeed exist. A methodological implication is that previous probe location could be considered in analyses or re-analyses of spatial visual attention tasks.
Attentional bias to cannabis cues in cannabis users but not cocaine users
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Attentional bias to drug cues has been associated with the problematic use of drugs, including cannabis. The cognitive mechanisms underlying this bias are not fully understood. The purpose of this study was to determine whether cannabis-cue attentional bias is associated with disruptions in attentional processing. To this end, a novel cannabis-cue visual probe task that incorporated eye tracking technology and attention-based metrics derived from signal detection theory was administered to seventeen individuals who reported daily/near-daily cannabis use. Seventeen individuals with cocaine use disorder were also enrolled as a clinical-control group. Cannabis and neutral images were briefly presented side-by-side on a computer screen, followed by the appearance of a “go” or “no-go” target upon offset of both images to permit assessment of attention-based performance. Cannabis users exhibited attentional bias to cannabis cues, as measured by fixation time and response time, but not cue-dependent disruptions on subsequent attentional performance. Cocaine users did not display an attentional bias to cannabis cues but did display poorer attentional performance relative to cannabis users. These results indicate that attentional bias to cannabis cues is selective to cannabis use history and not associated with impaired attentional processing.
Neural substrates of the emotion-word and emotional counting Stroop tasks in healthy and clinical populations: A meta-analysis of functional brain imaging studies
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The emotional Stroop task (EST) is among the most influential paradigms used to probe attention-related or cognitive control-related emotional processing in healthy subjects and clinical populations. The neuropsychological mechanism underlying the emotional Stroop effect has attracted extensive and long-lasting attention in both cognitive and clinical psychology and neuroscience; however, a precise characterization of the neural substrates underlying the EST in healthy and clinical populations remains elusive. Here, we implemented a coordinate-based meta-analysis covering functional imaging studies that employed the emotion-word or emotional counting Stroop paradigms to determine the underlying neural networks in healthy subjects and the trans-diagnostic alterations across clinical populations. Forty-six publications were identified that reported relevant contrasts (negative > neutral; positive > neutral) for healthy or clinical populations as well as for hyper- or hypo-activation of patients compared to controls. We demonstrate consistent involvement of the vlPFC and dmPFC in healthy subjects and consistent involvement of the vlPFC in patients. We further identify a trans-diagnostic pattern of hyper-activation in the prefrontal and parietal regions. These findings underscore the critical roles of cognitive control processes in the EST and implicate trans-diagnostic cognitive control deficits. Unlike the current models that emphasize the roles of the amygdala and rACC, our findings implicate novel mechanisms underlying the EST for both healthy and clinical populations.
Chronic cannabis use and attentional bias: Extended attentional capture to cannabis cues
2018, Addictive Behaviors
Citation Excerpt :
Attentional bias can be separated into engagement and disengagement processes (Posner, Inhoff, Friedrich, & Cohen, 1987). Recent studies have suggested that attentional engagement supports the development of addiction, while attentional disengagement contributes to the maintenance of addiction (van Hemel-Ruiter, de Jong, Oldehinkel, & Ostafin, 2013; Waters, Sayette, Franken, & Schwartz, 2005). In response to drug-related stimuli, attentional engagement occurs relatively early and automatically (e.g., 250 ms), while attentional disengagement occurs relatively later (e.g., 500 ms) reflecting impaired attentional shifts (van Hemel-Ruiter et al., 2013).
A significant proportion of chronic cannabis users experience occupational, social, and psychological problems thought to reflect, in part, cannabis-related cognitive and emotional attentional biases. The emotional attentional blink (EAB) is a unique test of attentional bias that assesses automatic responses, cue-detection failures, and rapid and temporally extended biases. Using the EAB, we tested users' and non-users' attentional biases and how cannabis exposure correlates with these attentional biases.
Forty-eight regular cannabis users and 51 non-users completed demographic, psychological, and cannabis-use reports and two EAB target-detection experiments. Each experiment comprised 160 trials. Each trial included a rapid serial visual presentation of images with one of four types of distractor images (cannabis, generically positive, neutral, or scrambled) preceding the target image. Distractor images were presented 200 ms (Lag 2) or 800 ms (Lag 8) before the target in Experiment 1 and 200 ms (Lag 2) or 500 ms (Lag 5) before the target in Experiment 2.
Chronic cannabis users exhibited exaggerated, immediate attentional bias (Lag 2) and exaggerated, extended attentional bias (Lag 5) compared to non-users. The intensity of cannabis-use (grams per week) correlated with more errors at the extended attentional bias durations (Lags 5 and 8).
Our results represent novel evidence of automatic attentional capture consistent with an exaggerated “wanting” motive in models of addiction. Our unique evidence of temporally extended attentional biases is consistent with attentional disengagement deficits associated with chronic cannabis use.
Attentional biases in body dysmorphic disorder (bdd): Eye-tracking using the emotional Stroop task
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Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is characterised by repetitive behaviours and/or mental acts occurring in response to preoccupations with perceived defects or flaws in physical appearance. This study aimed to examine attentional biases in BDD via the emotional Stroop task with two modifications: i) incorporating an eye-tracking paradigm, and ii) employing an obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) control group.
Twenty-one BDD, 19 OCD and 21 HC participants, who were age-, sex-, and IQ-matched, were included. A card version of the emotional Stroop task was employed based on seven 10-word lists: (i) BDD-positive, (ii) BDD-negative, (iii) OCD-checking, (iv) OCD-washing, (v) general positive, (vi) general threat, and (vii) neutral (as baseline). Participants were asked to read aloud words and word colours consecutively, thereby yielding accuracy and latency scores. Eye-tracking parameters were also measured.
Participants with BDD exhibited significant Stroop interference for BDD-negative words relative to HC participants, as shown by extended colour-naming latencies. In contrast, the OCD group did not exhibit Stroop interference for OCD-related nor general threat words. Only mild eye-tracking anomalies were uncovered in clinical groups. Inspection of individual scanning styles and fixation heat maps however revealed that viewing strategies adopted by clinical groups were generally disorganised, with avoidance of certain disorder-relevant words and considerable visual attention devoted to non-salient card regions.
The operation of attentional biases to negative disorder-specific words was corroborated in BDD. Future replication studies using other paradigms are vital, given potential ambiguities inherent in emotional Stroop task interpretation.

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Generalizability of carry-over effects in the emotional Stroop task

Abstract

Section snippets

Study 1

Study 2

Study 3

General discussion

Acknowledgement

Personality Indiv. Differences

Behav. Res. Ther.

Clin. Psychol. Rev.

Behav. Res. Ther.

Effects of type of design (blocked vs. randomized) on Stroop and emotional Stroop tasks

Psicothema

The American Heritage Word Frequency Book

Cognitive processing of trauma cues in rape victims with post-traumatic stress disorder

Cognitive Ther. Res.

Methodological issues attached to the alcohol Stroop paradigmComments on an article by Sharma, Albery, & Cook

Addiction

Performance on the emotional Stroop task in groups of anxious, expert, and control participantsA comparison of computer and card presentation formats

Cognition Emotion

Do threatening stimuli draw or hold visual attention in subclinical anxiety?

J. Exp. Psychol.General

Selective cognitive processing of drug cues in heroin dependence

J. Psychopharmacol.

Neurophysiological evidence for abnormal cognitive processing of drug cues in heroin dependence

Psychopharmacology

Attention and the processing of emotional words and names

Psychol. Sci.

The effects of blocked versus random presentation and semantic relatedness of stimulus words on response to a modified Stroop task among social phobics

Cognitive Ther. Res.