Disentangling fast and slow attentional influences of negative and taboo spoken words in the emotional Stroop paradigm

Abstract

Although the influence of the emotional content of stimuli on attention has been considered as occurring within trial, recent studies revealed that the presentation of such stimuli would also involve a slow component. The aim of the present study was to investigate fast and slow effects of negative (Exp. 1) and taboo (Exp. 2) spoken words. For this purpose, we used an auditory variant of the emotional Stroop paradigm in which each emotional word was followed by a sequence of neutral words. Replicating results from our previous study, we observed slow but no fast effects of negative and taboo words, which we interpreted as reflecting difficulties to disengage attention from their emotional dimension. Interestingly, while the presentation of a negative word only delayed the processing of the immediately subsequent neutral word, slow effects of taboo words were long-lasting. Nevertheless, such attentional effects were only observed when the emotional words were presented in the first block of trials, suggesting that once participants develop strategies to perform the task, attention-grabbing effects of emotional words disappear. Hence, far from being automatic, the occurrence of these effects would depend on participants' attentional set.

Keywords:

• Emotional Stroop
• Negative and taboo spoken words
• Fast and slow effects

Acknowledgements

We thank Marcha Van Boven and Cécile Vanholsbeeck for help in preparing the material and Emeline Boursain for testing participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ A repeated measures ANOVA on the error rates (i.e., incorrect identifications and responses made faster than 300 ms) did not show any significant interaction between Block Type and Position, F(4, 352) = 1.918, p = .107, nor between Block Type, Position and Block Order, F(4, 352) = 1.406, p = .232. Only the interaction between Block Type and Block Order was significant, F(1, 88) = 11.345, p = .001, showing that participants performed better in the neutral than the negative block when the negative block was presented first, F(1, 47) = 5.531, p = .023, and in the negative than the neutral block when the neutral block was presented first, F(1, 41) = 5.807, p = .021.

² A repeated measures ANOVA on the error rates (i.e., incorrect identifications and responses made faster than 300 ms) did not show any significant interaction between Block Type and Position, nor between Block Type, Position and Block Order, both F < 1. Only the interaction between Block Type and Block Order was significant, F(1, 89) = 14.941, p < .001, showing that participants performed better in the taboo than the neutral block when the neutral block was presented first, F(1, 44) = 12.618, p = .001. When the taboo block was presented first, the opposite trend was observed, F(1, 45) = 2.945, p = .093.

³ In the following, “emotional words” will refer only to the two types of emotional words we used in our study, namely negative and taboo words, although we are aware that emotional words might also have a positive emotional content.