Visual Set and Anxiety in the Stroop Phenomenon

Abstract

The effects of a visual set, the Stroop phenomenon, and anxiety--as measured by the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory--upon response latency were examined. Three variations of the set were presented, a color congruent with the response color, a color conflicting with the response color, or no color. Two response conditions were required, reading the color word or reporting the color in which the word was printed. "Reporting the color" had a significantly longer response latency than "reading the word" for all 60 subjects, female volunteers from freshman psychology classes. There was also a significant interaction between anxiety and the Stroop. The medium-anxiety group showed the least discrepancy between the response conditions of the Stroop, indicating the interference effect present in the Stroop phenomenon was least influential for this group. A consistent though not significant difference between the congruent set and conflicting set conditions for the color response as opposed to the word response indicated that, when the set is similar to the response, it is more influential than when it is unrelated.

Trading Accuracy for Speed: Gender Differences on a Stroop Task under Mild Performance Anxiety

“…Given the paucity of studies of gender differences in response to "natural" stressors, only tentative conclusions are feasible. When examining personality differences, it has been found that subjects who are high in "trait anxiety" tend to show more interference (read more slowly) (Hochman, 1969;Jorgenson, 1977;Ray, 1979). In the present data, however, men were faster and less accurate than women in the low-anxiety condition while equally fast and still less accurate in the high-anxiety condition.…”

“…Those who were most anxious about their impending examinations exhibited the most interference. She also suggests that the Stroop task could be used effectively as a measure of anxiety F~n a l l~, Jorgenson (1977) found that female students who scored high and low on trait anxiety showed more interference than those who scored medium on trait anxiety.…”

“…However, it should be noted that in the Pallak, et a / . (1975), the Pallak and Pittman (1972), and the Jorgenson (1977) studies only female undergraduates were subjects.…”

Speech recoding in silent reading

“…The size of the Stroop effect was not affected significantly by personality factors, which is consistent with the findings of Jensen (1965a), although there was a nonsignificant trend for high P scorers to show a larger Stroop effect than low P scorers. It may be relevant that Jorgenson (1977) reported a curvilinear relationship between Stroop interference and anxiety level (measured by the Spielberger, 1970, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory). Low-and high-anxiety females showed a larger Stroop effect than did medium-anxiety females.…”