TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2015//
TI  - Anxiety, emotional distraction, and attentional control in the Stroop task
JO  - Emotion
A1  - Kalanthroff, Eyal
A1  - Henik, Avishai
A1  - Derakshan, Nazanin
A1  - Usher, Marius
SP  - 293
EP  - 300
VL  - 16
IS  - 3
N2  - Using a Stroop task, we investigated the effect of task-irrelevant emotional distractors on attentional proactive control and its interaction with trait anxiety. On the basis of recent findings showing opposed neural responses in the dorsal-executive versus the ventral-emotional systems in response to emotional distractors and of the attentional control theory (Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007), we hypothesized that negative distractors will result in a reduction of proactive task control in the executive system, especially for high-trait-anxious individuals. Using a computational model of the Stroop task, we derive 2 specific behavioral predictions of reduced proactive task control: increased Stroop interference and reversed Stroop facilitation. Twenty-five high- and 25 low-trait-anxious participants completed a Stroop task in which the target stimuli were preceded by brief (neutral vs. aversive) emotional distractors. While no effects of picture valence on proactive control was found in the low-anxious group, the predicted signatures of reduced proactive control were observed in the high-anxiety group. These results indicate that trait anxiety influences the interaction between irrelevant emotional stimuli and proactive control. (PsycINFO Database Record<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1528-3542
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000129
ID  - ref1
ER  -