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
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).
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.
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
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).
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?
Present Study
• Manipulated baseword valence
• Tested Stroop interference and incidental
memory for basewords
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
Mean valence ratings for basewords
(1 = very negative, 7 = very positive)
Neutral
Positive
Negative
Example
TABLE
SKILLET
PLATE
HAPPY
ADORED
SMILE
EVIL
CORPSE
MAGGOT
Young
Older
4.07
4.23*
6.10
6.31*
1.76
1.66
Older adults > young adults on ratings, p < .05
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
HAPPY
“Red”
EVIL
“Blue”
TABLE
“Green”
Participant Characteristics
n
Age (years)
Vocabulary
Young
36
19.4
34.1
Old
36
73.2
36.2*
(Shipley)
All participants native English speakers and in good health.
* p < .05
Color naming latencies by age and
baseword valence
Response Time (ms)
800
750
731
728
742*
negative
positive
700
neutral
650
617
620
628*
600
550
YOUNG
OLD
Correct recall by age and baseword
valence
4
Total Basewords Recalled
3.5
negative
3
positive
2.39*
2.5
2.06*
neutral
2
1.5
1.14
1.31
1.08
1
0.64
0.5
0
YOUNG
OLD
No significant
Age effect
Experiment 1:Conclusions
• Magnitude and pattern of Stroop interference did not differ
for young and older adults
• Stroop interference for negative valence basewords >
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
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 < Negative
Experiment 2 controlled level of arousal to
determine if the emotion Stroop effect for
negative stimuli was due to greater
arousal.
Mean arousal ratings for basewords
(9 point scale)
Neutral1
Positive
Negative
KETTLE
PASSION
MURDER
ANEW ratings
3.64
6.33
6.38
Post-ratings
Young
Old
2.75
3.16
5.82
6.08
6.63*
6.87*
Example
1
The ANEW system did not contain ratings for all the Neutral items
Mean valence ratings for basewords
(1 = very negative, 7 = very positive)
Example
ANEW
ratings
Post-ratings
Young
Old
1
Neutral1
Positive
Negative
KETTLE
PASSION
MURDER
5.25
7.80
2.21
4.13
4.51*
5.83
6.07*
1.91
1.89
The ANEW system did not contain ratings for all the Neutral items
*p<.05 Older adults rated these basewords higher on the valence scale than young adults
Color naming latencies by age and
baseword valence
Response Time (ms)
800
749 750
750
Neutral
Positive
Negative
700
650
627 625 637
600
550
Young
764
Old
Total Basewords Recalled
Recall by age and baseword valence
3.73
4
3.5
3
2.47
2.5
2
1.5
1.47 1.6
1.07 0.93
1
0.5
0
Young
Old
Neutral
Positive
Negative
Summary and Conclusions
Age 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
Summary and Conclusions
Valence 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
Osborne, Burke & Clausen, 2006
“Blue”
Negative condition
Osborne, Burke & Clausen, 2006
“Brown”
Negative_neutral condition
Osborne, Burke & Clausen, 2006
“Red”
Positive condition
Osborne, Burke & Clausen, 2006
“Green”
Positive_neutral condition
Experiment 1
Results
Response Time (ms)
Negative
660
640
620
600
580
560
540
520
500
Neutral_negative
Positive
646
Neutral_positive
*
634
629 633
578
*
569 566 566
Young
* p<.01 latencies were slower for negative than negative_neutral trials
Older