Selective attention for threatening information in anxious mood states

Attention for threatening information was investigated using a computerised version of the emotional Stroop. The study examined the influence of state and trait anxiety in an unselected student sample assigned to high trait anxious (HTA) or low trait anxious (LTA) groups on the basis questionnaire scores. State anxiety was manipulated within participants through the threat of electric shock. Threatening words that were either unrelated (e.g., cancer, danger) or related to the source of the threat (e.g., electrocute, shock) were presented to participants both within and outside of awareness. In the latter condition, a backward masking procedure was used to prevent awareness of the stimulus material. In the masked condition, despite chance performance in identification of the lexical status of stimulus items, HTA participants showed facilitated colour naming for all threat words relative to control items under threat of shock, but this effect was not evident in the shock safe condition. For unmasked trials the HTA group showed significant interference in colour naming for all threat words relative to controls under the threat of shock, but not in the shock safe condition. Neither valence of the items nor the threat of shock influenced colour naming latencies for the LTA group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]