Attentional bias for trauma-related words: exaggerated emotional Stroop effect in Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans with PTSD

BMC Psychiatry

Diane Swick¹  Timothy Justus¹  Jary Larsen¹  Nikki Honzel¹  Victoria Ashley¹ 

[1] The Department of Neurology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

关键词: Interference;    Trauma;    Habituation;    Stroop;    PTSD;    Posttraumatic stress disorder;   

Others  :  1124108
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-244X-13-86

 received in 2012-07-02, accepted in 2013-03-05,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Background

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) involves debilitating symptoms that can disrupt cognitive functioning. The emotional Stroop has been commonly used to examine the impact of PTSD on attentional control, but no published study has yet used it with Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans, and only one previous study has compared groups on habituation to trauma-related words.

Methods

We administered the emotional Stroop, the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and the PTSD Checklist (PCL) to 30 veterans with PTSD, 30 military controls, and 30 civilian controls. Stroop word types included Combat, Matched-neutral, Neutral, Positive and Negative.

Results

Compared to controls, veterans with PTSD were disproportionately slower in responding to Combat words. They were also slower and less accurate overall, did not show interference on Negative or Positive words relative to Neutral, and showed a trend for delayed but successful habituation to Combat words. Higher PCL and BDI scores also correlated with larger interference effects.

Conclusions

Because of its specificity in detecting attentional biases to trauma-related words, the emotional Stroop task may serve as a useful pre- and post task with intervention studies of PTSD patients.

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Ashley et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

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