Emotional Stroop Task With Verbal Responding

Technical Manual

Last Modified: January 17, 2023 by K. Borchert (katjab@millisecond.com), Millisecond

Script Copyright © Millisecond Software, LLC

Background

This script implements an Aggression Themed Emotional Stroop task. The classic Stroop paradigm demonstrates the interference of word meaning on naming the color in which the words are written as measured by reaction time/accuracy differences to color-meaning congruent and color-meaning incongruent combinations. The Aggression Stroop takes advantage of this basic Stroop interference effect by comparing responses to aggression related words, positive and negative words and neutral words.

The implemented procedure is based on:

Smith, P. & Waterman, M. (2003). Processing bias for aggression words in forensic and nonforensic samples. Cognition and Emotion, 17, 681-701.

This script uses voice recordings. The accuracy of the responses needs to be manually scored based on recorded files or use Tools -> Speech Recognition -> Analyze Recorded Responses.

Duration

5 minutes

Description

Participants are presented words from 5 different categories (aggression, neutral, positive, negative, color word) in four different colors (blue, red, yellow, green) and are asked to speak out loud the color of the word.

Procedure

1. Practice Block: 10 trials (not original; this script uses the words "one" to "ten" as practice stimuli)
2. Test Block: 125 trials (= 5 categories x 25 trials); trials are randomly sampled
without replacement

Since accuracy is not checked by this script (but has to be manually done based on the recorded voice files),
no error messages can be presented.

Stimuli

• original stimuli by Smith & Waterman (2003)
(due to a potential typo in the original article one word appeared
under two categories (Appendix2); we replaced it with a word that is similar in length and appearance
=> section Editable STIMULI-> Negative Words)

• each color appears 6 times in each category (the 7th pairing of word-color is random)
• color words "red", "yellow", "blue" and "green" are not used as targets
• 5 color words are repeats (see Smith & Waterman, 2003)

Instructions

not original; can be easily altered under section Editable INSTRUCTIONS

Summary Data

File Name: emotionalstroopwithvoicerecording_summary*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
inquisit.version Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
startDate Date the session was run
startTime Time the session was run
subjectId Participant ID
groupId Group number
sessionId Session number
elapsedTime Session duration in ms
completed 0 = Test was not completed
1 = Test was completed

Raw Data

File Name: emotionalstroopwithvoicerecording_raw*.iqdat

Data Fields

NameDescription
build Inquisit version number
computer.platform Device platform: win | mac |ios | android
date Date the session was run
time Time the session was run
subject Participant ID
group Group number
session Session number
blockCode Name of the current block
blockNum Number of the current block
trialCode Name of the current trial
trialNum Number of the current trial
target The currently selected target word
color The currently selected color
response The participant's response (recording of response)
the recording needs to be manually scored
latency The response latency (in ms); measured from onset of word

Parameters

The procedure can be adjusted by setting the following parameters.

NameDescriptionDefault
fixationCrossPresentationTime Time (in ms) that fixation cross is presented 500ms