Specificity of stroop interference in patients with pain and PTSD

The authors investigated processing of threat words in motor vehicle accide nt survivors using a modified Stroop procedure. Three samples were included : 28 participants with comorbid posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and pa in, 26 participants with pain without PTSD, and 21 participants without pai n or any psychiatric conditions. Four word categories were used: (a) accide nt words, (b) pain words, (c) positive words, and (d) neutral words. This s tudy examined whether processing biases would occur to accident words only in participants with PTSD or if these biases would also be noted in the No PTSD/Pain sample. Additionally, this study examined whether processing bias es would be noted to pain words in the 2 pain samples, irrespective of PTSD . Overall, color naming was significantly slower in the PTSD/Pain group in comparison with the other groups. As well, the PTSD/Pain sample showed sign ificant response delays to both accident and pain-related words, whereas pa tients with No PTSD/Pain showed delays to pain stimuli only.