Health-related information processing and recent health problems: evidence from a modified stroop task.
Our purpose was to assess the relationship between health status and health-related information processing. We expected that persons who report a recent health problem would show greater bias towards relevant stimuli. Participants comprised two groups: the experimental with 25 students who recently had to interrupt usual activities because of their health, and a comparison group of 25 healthy students matched for demographics, health habits and current health. Using an emotional Stroop task, the experimental group demonstrated enhanced interference effects for illness and health-related versus general threat and neutral words. Satisfaction with life impacted the processing of health and illness-related stimuli.
Karademas
Evangelos C
EC
University of Crete, Greece. karademas@psy.soc.voc.gr
Sideridis
Georgios D
GD
Kafetsios
Konstantinos
K
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D005260:Female; D006115:Greece; D006266:Health Education; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010549:Personal Satisfaction; D011930:Reaction Time; D014584:User-Computer Interface