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Updated: Jul 5, 2026
The Emotional Stroop Task: Assessing Cognitive Performance under Exposure to Emotional Content
Published on: June 29, 2016
[Selecting material to develop an emotional Stroop test adapted to schizophrenia and bipolar disorders]
Nathalie Besnier1, Arthur Kaladjian, Pascale Mazzola-Pomietto
1Service du Pr Azorin, SHU de Psychiatrie Adultes, Hôpital Sainte Marguerite, Marseille, France. besnier_nathalie@yahoo.fr
Objective:
The emotional Stroop test evaluates the influence of the emotional valence of stimuli on cognitive inhibition processes. In subjects with psychiatric disorders, interference increases in this test when valence refers to their specific psychopathology. This study aims to develop a version of the emotional Stroop test adapted to paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
Method:
The emotional valence and the number of times patients used 200 words related to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder psychopathology were assessed by 25 clinicians; then a principal component analysis was performed with an ascending hierarchical classification.
Results:
Words are distributed according to 2 factorial dimensions, emotionality and tonality, into 4 valence classifications: depressive, paranoid, manic, and neutral words. There were no differences in the lexical frequency of the words chosen to develop the test.
Conclusions:
The statistical validation of the emotional valence of words allows for the development of an emotional Stroop test adapted to exploring emotional bias in paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
