Emotional Stroop Task - ABCD

Background

The ABCD Emotional Stroop Task (ABCD EST), under the supervision of Mary Banich, is used as part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study®), a decade long longitudinal study on brain development and child health supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The ABCD EST task is run on tablets (in-person testing) and on smartphones (remote testing) which became necessary during the 2020 Pandemic.

The goal of the ABCD EST task is to study cognitive control under conditions of emotional salience. Whereas the classic Color-Word Stroop Task studies interference of (incongruent) colors on word naming, the ABCD EST task focuses on the impact that displayed face emotions have on participants' categorization performance of emotion words into 'good' and 'bad' feelings. These displayed emotions can either be congruent with the emotion word (e.g. a 'happy' face paired with the word 'joyful') or incongruent (e.g. an angry face paired with the word 'joyful'). The target task is always to categorize the words regardless of face emotion. Participants are usually faster and have higher accuracy in categorizing emotional words if they match the displayed face emotion.

Task Procedure

Participants are presented, one at a time, a series of face images names (female and male) with a blue emotion word superimposed on it. The word is either displayed on the upper part of the face or the lower one, and it can either be a match or a mismatch for the displayed face emotion. Participants are instructed to keep their response fingers hovering above the left and right response buttons and respond as fast possible to categorize the emotion words by pressing the relevant button. Half the participants use the left (right) response button to categorize 'bad' ('good') feeling words; the other half use the opposite ones.

Participants work through 2 test blocks of 48 trials each: one block consists of 50% congruent and 50% incongruent trials (E); the other consists of 25% incongruent trials and 75% congruent trials (MC). The composition of the former type of block helps individuals keep the task set in mind more so than the latter. The order of these two test blocks is always fixed, with participants working on block MC first. Before working on the test trials, participants work through a set of practice trials. During practice, participants receive performance feedback. No feedback is provided during the test trials.

What it Measures

The ABCD Emotional Stroop Task is a measure of cognitive control (response inhibition) under conditions of emotional salience in children and adolescents.

Psychological Domains

• Executive Function
• Inhibitory Control: Ability to suppress dominant automatic response in favor of a weaker one
• Selective Attention: Ability to focus on the relevant stimulus dimension
• Processing Speed: Overall reaction times reflect psychomotor and perceptual speed

Main Performance Metrics

• Accuracy: proportion correct responses to congruent and incongruent trials
• Response Times: mean response times to congruent and incongruent trials

Psychiatric Conditions

In general performance on the Stroop tasks tends to be impaired in patients with the following psychiatric conditions:

• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)