Aging, Emotion, Attention, and Binding in the Taboo Stroop Task: Data and Theories

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Donald G. MacKay³  Laura W. Johnson³  Elizabeth R. Graham¹  Deborah M. Burke¹  Lori E. James² 

[1] Department of Psychology, Pomona College and Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA 91711, USA; E-Mails:;Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; E-Mail;Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; E-Mail:

关键词: aging;    emotion;    attention;    memory;    taboo Stroop task;    binding theory;    transmission deficit hypothesis;    resource capacity theory;    socio-emotional selectivity theory;    inhibition deficit theory;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijerph121012803

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

How does aging impact relations between emotion, memory, and attention? To address this question, young and older adults named the font colors of taboo and neutral words, some of which recurred in the same font color or screen location throughout two color-naming experiments. The results indicated longer color-naming response times (RTs) for taboo than neutral base-words (taboo Stroop interference); better incidental recognition of colors and locations consistently associated with taboo versus neutral words (taboo context-memory enhancement); and greater speed-up in color-naming RTs with repetition of color-consistent than color-inconsistent taboo words, but no analogous speed-up with repetition of location-consistent or location-inconsistent taboo words (the consistency type by repetition interaction for taboo words). All three phenomena remained constant with aging, consistent with the transmission deficit hypothesis and binding theory, where familiar emotional words trigger age-invariant reactions for prioritizing the binding of contextual features to the source of emotion. Binding theory also accurately predicted the interaction between consistency type and repetition for taboo words. However, one or more aspects of these phenomena failed to support the inhibition deficit hypothesis, resource capacity theory, or socio-emotional selectivity theory. We conclude that binding theory warrants further test in a range of paradigms, and that relations between aging and emotion, memory, and attention may depend on whether the task and stimuli trigger fast-reaction, involuntary binding processes, as in the taboo Stroop paradigm.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.