Gilmour, John 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1549-8772
(2016)
The slow effect of state anxiety on emotional stroop task performance.
Honours thesis,
University of Southern Queensland.
(Unpublished)
Abstract
When presented with threatening information, individuals can enter a delayed state of hypervigilance known as threat monitoring. Threat monitoring increases the attention paid to negative stimuli. The emotional Stroop task (EST) is a simple colour-naming test that has been used to investigate threat monitoring. When presented with emotional words, there is an increase in response time (RT) in identifying the coloured font of negative words when compared to neutral or positive words. More recent studies using the EST have shown that a delay in RT can occur after a negative word has been identified, resulting in an increased RT on the stimuli following the negative word (i.e., a slow effect). High levels of state anxiety (SA) in an individual increases the likelihood of threat monitoring and could directly affect whether a slow effect in the EST occurs. If high SA individuals show a slow effect, and low SA individuals do not, a combination of both high and low SA individuals in a single sample could result in the detection of a slow effect. As this has yet to be examined, this study aimed to investigate the effects of SA on EST performance. A final sample of 109 participants completed the EST and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. RTs for high and low SA groups were examined using a mixed factorial ANOVA. As expected, a slow effect emerged for the total sample and the high SA group, with no slow effect found in the low SA group. This shows that high SA individuals affect the detection of the slow effect found in a total sample. The larger implications for previous studies using the EST to detect the slow effect will be discussed.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Psychology and Counselling (1 Jan 2015 - 31 Dec 2021) |
| Supervisors: | Jessica Marrington |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Psychology (Honours) |
| Date Deposited: | 20 Aug 2025 03:56 |
| Last Modified: | 20 Aug 2025 03:56 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | threat monitoring ; emotional Stroop task ; slow effect ; state anxiety |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52349 |
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