Anxiety-related stroop interference in adolescents

A group of 16- to 18-year-old students was presented with threat-related an d neutral Stroop stimuli on separate cards. Participants were assigned to a nxiety groups on the basis of their scores on the Beck Anxiety Inventory (B AI: A. T. Beck & R. A. Steer, 1990). It was found, as predicted, that the h igh-anxiety group took significantly longer to identify the color of the th reat-related word than the neutral words, whereas there was no difference f or the low-anxiety group. There was a significant linear relationship betwe en interference on the task and BAI scores, showing that as anxiety increas es there is a corresponding increase in interference produced by the threat -related stimuli when compared with the neutral stimuli. This study demonst rates an anxiety-related Stroop interference effect for adolescents consist ent with that reported in the adult literature.