Centennial Honors College
Western Illinois University
Undergraduate Research Day 2014
Poster Presentation
Post-traumatic stress disorder: Affects of anxiety on emotional stimuli
Kearston Barwegen
Faculty Mentor: Sandra McFadden
Psychology
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disorder that affects people who experience a
traumatic event and therefore acquire intense, long lasting, emotional levels of anxiety.
In this study 11 participants (4 males, 7 females) were asked to fill out the Posttraumatic
Stress Disorder Checklist-civilian (PCL-c), and then were asked to wear an electrode
cap while responding to an emotional Stroop task. It was hypothesized that participants
who scored higher on PTSD would have longer reaction times to the negative emotional
stimuli than participants who scored lower on PTSD. We also hypothesized that
participants who scored higher in PTSD would show more incorrect responses to the
emotional Stroop task than participants who scored lower on PTSD. Data for this study
are still being analyzed for the results