Anxiety-related Stroop interference in adolescents

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Clinical Psychology

Background:

• Anxiety is associated with cognitive biases, particularly attentional bias towards threat.
• The Stroop task is a widely used measure of selective attention and cognitive interference.
• Previous research indicates Stroop interference in adults, but less is known about this effect in adolescents.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether adolescents exhibit an anxiety-related Stroop interference effect.
• To examine the relationship between anxiety levels and performance on a threat-related Stroop task in adolescents.
• To compare Stroop interference in high-anxiety versus low-anxiety adolescent groups.

Main Methods:

• Participants: 16- to 18-year-old students.
• Assessment: Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) to categorize participants into high-anxiety and low-anxiety groups.
• Task: Presentation of threat-related and neutral Stroop stimuli, measuring color identification times.

Main Results:

• The high-anxiety group demonstrated significantly longer reaction times for threat-related words compared to neutral words.
• The low-anxiety group did not show a significant difference in reaction times between threat-related and neutral words.
• A linear relationship was observed between BAI scores and Stroop interference, indicating increased interference with higher anxiety levels.

Conclusions:

• Adolescents with higher anxiety exhibit a Stroop interference effect with threat-related stimuli.
• This finding in adolescents is consistent with previously reported anxiety-related Stroop interference in adults.
• The study supports the notion that anxiety impacts cognitive processing of threat-related information in adolescents.