Anxiety-related Stroop interference in adolescents.
A group of 16- to 18-year-old students was presented with threat-related and neutral Stroop stimuli on separate cards. Participants were assigned to anxiety groups on the basis of their scores on the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; A. T. Beck & R. A. Steer, 1990). It was found, as predicted, that the high-anxiety group took significantly longer to identify the color of the threat-related word than the neutral words, whereas there was no difference for the low-anxiety group. There was a significant linear relationship between interference on the task and BAI scores, showing that as anxiety increases there is a corresponding increase in interference produced by the threat-related stimuli when compared with the neutral stimuli. This study demonstrates an anxiety-related Stroop interference effect for adolescents consistent with that reported in the adult literature.
Richards
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Department of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. a.richards@bbk.ac.uk
Richards
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McGeeney
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D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D003118:Color Perception; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics