Processing bias and anxiety in primary school children: A modified emotional stroop colour-naming task using pictorial facial expressions.

Abstract

Abstract Three studies (Study I: N = 92, Study II: N = 63, Study III: N = 225) investigated the processing of threat-related information in non-clinical samples of young primary school children (aged 6 to 10 years) using a pictorial version of the modified emotional Stroop colour-naming task; the stimuli included threatening and happy facial expressions. The results of these experiments showed that for young children it seems promising to explore error data in addition to colour-naming times. With regard to the number of errors, in Study I, high trait anxious children selectively had the highest error rates on threatening stimuli. Similarly, in Study II, state anxiety (worry) was associated with a differential bias for threat-related error rates. Thereby, class level moderated the association between colour-naming times and error data (Study III). The results are discussed with respect to the literature on anxiety-linked Stroop interference in children. Key words: cognitive bias, anxiety, emotional Stroop task, children Introduction In recent years, there has been a large interest in exploring the cognitive processes that are assumed to cause or maintain emotional disorders. The general finding in the adult literature is that emotional states are associated with distinctive patterns in the processing of personally-relevant emotional information. Anxiety is associated with the selective processing of threat-related stimuli (Williams, Watts, MacLeod & Mathews, 1997). One of the most frequently used paradigms for the study of cognitive bias for threat is a modified version of the Stroop colour naming task (Stroop, 1935). Participants are required to name the colours in which either threat-related or neutral words are printed while trying to ignore the content of the word (Mathews & MacLeod, 1985). The time difference between colour-naming threatening and neutral words provides the relevant measure, called emotional Stroop interference. This index is an indicator of the degree to which attentional resources are captured by the word content. Numerous studies have shown that anxiety in adults (particularly for clinically anxious patients) is associated with a cognitive bias towards threatening information (for a review see Williams, Mathews & MacLeod, 1996). High anxious participants show longer colour-naming times for words with threatening content than for non-threatening words. No differences in colour-naming latencies are shown for participants with low anxiety (e.g., Bradley, Mogg, Millar & White, 1995; Mathews & MacLeod, 1985; Mogg, Mathews & Weinman, 1989). Both trait anxiety (e.g., Mogg et al., 1989) and state anxiety (e.g., Mathews & MacLeod, 1985) were associated with emotional Stroop interference. Processing interference is most pronounced when emotional stimuli match personally relevant concerns (Williams et al., 1996). Results of studies using non-clinical samples are less consistent (e.g., Fox, 1993; MacLeod & Rutherford, 1992; Mogg & Marden, 1990; Mogg, Mathews, Bird & Macgregor-Morris, 1990; Richards & French, 1990). In contrast to the large number of adult studies investigating anxiety-related cognitive bias with the emotional Stroop task, only few studies have addressed this topic in children (see Vasey & MacLeod, 2001, for a review). Moreover, based on extremely anxious or highly selected samples, most of this research has focused on children with fear of spiders. The first publication (Martin, Horder & Jones, 1992) showed that for all children (aged 6 to 13 years) colour-naming latencies were generally longer for spider-related words than for control words, particularly for spider-fearful children. The same anxiety-related bias for threat was found using a pictorial spider Stroop task in children aged 4 to 9 years (Martin & Jones, 1995). However, Kindt and colleagues (Kindt, Bierman & Brosschot, 1997; Kindt, Brosschot & Everaerd, 1997) have failed to find an anxiety-linked differential bias in children (aged 8 to 12 years) with spider and medical fear, respectively. …