THE EMOTIONAL STROOP TASK: DO INHIBITION DEFICITS IMPAIR OLDER ADULTS’ ABILITY TO IGNORE EMOTIONAL WORDS? Gabrielle Osborne Claremont Graduate University Deborah Burke and Lillian May Pomona College Cognitive Aging Conference, April, 2006

Emotional processing well maintained in old age Older adults are adept at regulating emotions Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST): older adults seek emotionally gratifying experiences by focusing on positive information and avoiding negative information more than young adults (e.g., Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999; Carstensen & Mikels, 2005; Mather & Carstensen, 2003).

Cognitive processes in the service of emotion: Age deficits? Resilience to aging declines- Memory. For example: Mikels, Larkin, Reuter-Lorenz & Carstensen (2005) : Better working memory performance for older than young adults when positive emotional pictures are involved. May, Rahhal, Berry & Leighton (2005): Age declines in memory for context were eliminated when the contextual information was emotional.

Selective attention: Does emotion affect inhibitory processes in older adults? Inhibition Deficit model: Inhibition becomes less efficient with aging, impairing, for example, selective attention in older adults Stroop interference increases with age and some researchers attribute this to age-linked inhibition deficits (e.g., Spieler, Balota & Faust, 1996) Stroop task proposed as an index of inhibition efficiency

Emotion Stroop: Emotional words produce greater interference than neutral words. in normal participants In participants suffering from e.g., high anxiety, depression or phobia for self-relevant words. Generally found for negative not positive basewords (McKenna (& Sharma, 1995).

Emotion Stroop and aging? Wurm, Labouvie-Vief, Aycock, Rebucal and Koch (2004) Old but not young showed increased Stroop interference for high arousal basewords (e.g., killer). Suggests emotional stimuli do not ameliorate hypothesized inhibition deficits. No emotion Stroop effect for young adults? Older adults less able to suppress negative emotion words?

Present Study Manipulated baseword valence Tested Stroop interference and incidental memory for basewords

Experiment 1: Manipulated valence of basewords Basewords: 24 positive valence 24 negative valence 24 neutral (household items) Valence based on ratings by young and older adults Matched on frequency # of syllables # of letters Basewords appeared in red, green, blue or brown

Mean valence ratings for basewords (1 = very negative, 7 = very positive) Neutral Positive Negative Example TABLE SKILLET PLATE HAPPY ADORED SMILE EVIL CORPSE MAGGOT Young Older 4.07 4.23* 6.10 6.31* 1.76 1.66 Older adults > young adults on ratings, p < .05

Experiment 1: Procedure Presentation blocked by valence- 8 basewords per block and blocks in random order. Instructions: Ignore the word and name the color as quickly as possible. Basewords appeared twice-- 144 trials After completion of Stroop trials, free recall of basewords Rating of basewords on valence

HAPPY “Red”

EVIL “Blue”

TABLE “Green”

Participant Characteristics Young Old n 36 36 Age (years) 19.4 73.2 Vocabulary 34.1 36.2* (Shipley) All participants native English speakers and in good health. * p < .05

Color naming latencies by age and baseword valence 800 742* 750 731 728 negative positive Response Time (ms) 700 neutral 650 628* 617 620 600 550 YOUNG OLD

Correct recall by age and baseword valence 4 3.5 negative 3 positive 2.39* 2.5 2.06* neutral Total Basewords Recalled 2 1.5 1.31 1.14 1.08 1 No significant Age effect 0.64 0.5 YOUNG OLD

Experiment 1:Conclusions Magnitude and pattern of Stroop interference did not differ for young and older adults Stroop interference for negative valence basewords > neutral or positive basewords, which did not differ. Consistent with previous findings of emotion Stroop for young adults and extends them to older adults Inconsistent with Wurm et al. (2004) who reported greater interference for high arousal basewords for old but not young adults No evidence for a positivity bias in latency or recall. Suggests that bias towards positive in other tasks depends on conscious controlled processing

Positive < Negative Could valence effects reflect differences in arousal between positive and negative basewords? Arousal not matched in E1 Mean arousal rating for emotional basewords (ANEW norms, Bradley & Lang, 1999). Positive < Negative Experiment 2 controlled level of arousal to determine if the emotion Stroop effect for negative stimuli was due to greater arousal.

Mean arousal ratings for basewords (9 point scale) Neutral1 Positive Negative Example KETTLE PASSION MURDER ANEW ratings 3.64 6.33 6.38 Post-ratings Young Old 2.75 3.16 5.82 6.08 6.63* 6.87* 1 The ANEW system did not contain ratings for all the Neutral items

Mean valence ratings for basewords (1 = very negative, 7 = very positive) Neutral1 Positive Negative Example KETTLE PASSION MURDER ANEW ratings 5.25 7.80 2.21 Post-ratings Young Old 4.13 4.51* 5.83 6.07* 1.91 1.89 1 The ANEW system did not contain ratings for all the Neutral items *p<.05 Older adults rated these basewords higher on the valence scale than young adults

Color naming latencies by age and baseword valence

Recall by age and baseword valence

Summary and Conclusions Age effects In both experiments, young and older adults showed the same pattern of negative emotion Stroop effects and better memory for negative emotion words. No evidence for age-related inhibition deficits. Inhibition in the service of emotion regulation is immune to age deficits

Summary and Conclusions Valence effects No evidence for a positivity bias in latency or recall. Bias towards positive in other attention and memory tasks depends on conscious, strategic processing that is eliminated in Stroop selective attention Processing of negative emotional stimuli is more automatic and intrusive relative to positive stimuli

Osborne, Burke & Clausen, 2006 “Blue” Negative condition

Osborne, Burke & Clausen, 2006 “Brown” Negative_neutral condition

Osborne, Burke & Clausen, 2006 “Red” Positive condition

Osborne, Burke & Clausen, 2006 “Green” Positive_neutral condition

Experiment 1 Results * * * p<.01 latencies were slower for negative than negative_neutral trials