Relationships of Distinct Affective Dimensions to Performance on an Emotional Stroop Task

Few studies have examined the nature of enhanced selective attention to threatening stimuli with regard to distinct affective dimensions in nonclinical samples. No study to date has explored the relationships of multiple anxiety-related dimensions to performance on an emotional Stroop task. An adult sample without history of spontaneous panic attacks (N = 138) participated in an emotional Stroop task, and performance was analyzed in light of several types of self-reported anxiety. Only anxiety sensitivity distinguished individuals who showed a pattern of interference to threat information from those who showed a pattern of facilitation. No anxiety type was associated with reaction time patterns to appetitive distractors. These results highlight the importance of deconstructing anxiety into separate dimensions such that unique relationships between anxiety types and cognitive processing can be examined.