Consequences of emotional stimuli: age differences on pure and mixed blocks of the emotional Stroop

Abstract

BackgroundStudies of aging and emotion suggest that older adults show diminished responsiveness to negative information, possibly resulting from increased emotion regulation, but the mechanisms accounting for this effect are uncertain.MethodsTo examine whether aging affects the allocation of attention to negative stimuli, we compared 20 younger and 20 older adults on 2 versions of the emotional Stroop task: "pure blocks," in which all words in each block were either emotional or neutral, and "mixed blocks," a pseudorandomized design in which either a negative emotional or a neutral category word was always followed by six neutral words. The emotional Stroop task typically elicits slower reaction times for naming the font color of negative emotional words compared to neutral, but no studies have examined the effects of aging on the immediate and sustained components of the emotional Stroop effect.ResultsBoth groups showed an emotional Stroop effect on pure blocks manifest as slower RTs on the emotional, relative to the neutral, block. However, only younger adults showed persistent slowing that carried over from emotional words onto subsequent neutral words in mixed blocks.ConclusionThese results suggest that the consequences of emotional stimuli may differ with age. Younger and older adults showed equivalent interference from the emotional words themselves, but older adults did not show a sustained effect of negative information.

Attentional bias and emotion in older adults: Age-related differences in responses to an emotional Stroop task

“…However, authors noted that the failure to observe the effect of valence in this study may be a result of "carefully equated arousal across the three valence conditions (neutral, positive, negative)" (p. 529). On the other hand, our data are not consistent with Ashley and Swick (2009) findings which generally support the hypothesis of an interference effect on valence in the healthy elderly. Ashley and Swick (2009) observed interference effects (slower RTs to emotional words, in relation to neutral ones) both in young and older adults, using a pure block of emotional and neutral words.…”

“…On the other hand, our data are not consistent with Ashley and Swick (2009) findings which generally support the hypothesis of an interference effect on valence in the healthy elderly. Ashley and Swick (2009) observed interference effects (slower RTs to emotional words, in relation to neutral ones) both in young and older adults, using a pure block of emotional and neutral words. However, positive aging effects (i.e.…”

“…However, the Stroop effect was not observed in this study to the valence of words, both in younger and older groups. Contrary to these data, Ashley and Swick (2009) findings suggest that both younger and older adult groups showed an emotional Stroop effect on the valence of pure blocks of words: slower responses to emotional, relative to neutral, block of words. However, a positive effect of aging was observed in this study in the randomly mixed block of emotional and neutral words, showing an age-related diminishment of emotional interference effects.…”

“…diminishment of interference effects in older adults as compared to younger ones) was observed by them on mixed blocks of emotional and neutral words, but not on pure blocks. Contrary to Wurm et al (2004), and to Ashley andSwick (2009), LaMonica et al (2010) found positive aging effects on the valence of words, using a pure block of emotional and neutral words. The data analyses presented in their study suggest that contrary to younger adults, older people (60+) performed better on affective than neutral conditions.…”

“…(2010) mentioned only that the pattern of performance on affective and neutral conditions did not differ among individuals in the 60s and 70s age groups. In this context the following question arises: whether the age-related tendency to emotional interference diminishment, reported by LaMonica et al (2010) and by Ashley and Swick (2009), does not continue in the period of late adulthood?…”