Anxiety-related Stroop Interference in Adolescents

A group of 16- to 18-year-old students was presented with threat-related and neutral Stroop stimuli on separate cards. Participants were assigned to anxiety groups on the basis of their scores on the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; A. T. Beck & R. A. Steer, 1990). It was found, as predicted, that the high-anxiety group took significantly longer to identify the color of the threat-related word than the neutral words, whereas there was no difference for the low-anxiety group. There was a significant linear relationship between interference on the task and BAI scores, showing that as anxiety increases there is a corresponding increase in interference produced by the threat-related stimuli when compared with the neutral stimuli. This study demonstrates an anxiety-related Stroop interference effect for adolescents consistent with that reported in the adult literature.