Abstract
PTSD patients showed a stress response and attention bias, which also showed a certain bias to the traumatic events and similar events. Also, the cognitive function of the individual with post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD) was damaged to a certain degree. Past research at home and abroad paid more attention on the compare between PTSD individuals with normal people, and few study was involved with the Stroop interference effect in individuals with trauma. In the study, we will study the cognition function of trauma participants by classic Stroop paradigm, and explore whether there is distinct difference on the Stroop effect for different stimulus between high and low trauma participants. The gender difference also exists in the Stroop research, and many researches at home and abroad show that the gender is a factor that influences the Stroop effect. In addition, the probability of developing into trauma is higher in female participants than male participants. So, the study will investigate whether there is gender difference on the Stroop effect in trauma participants.
The Stroop task have two types: one is congruent task that the color is concurs with the meaning of the word; the other is inconsistent task that the color is incongruent with the meaning of the word. The experiments chosen four Chinese characters including 红,黄,绿and 蓝. Every Chinese character have four color including red, yellow, green and blue.
The present study investigates how different Stroop task and gender affect the cognition interference for participants with high/low posttraumatic stress disorder. A 3 (trauma level: high trauma group, low trauma group) × 2 (gender: male, female) × 2 (task type: congruent task, in congruent task) mixed experiment design was carried out. Sixty-five participants selected from 3853 university students took part in the experiment; the students who reported at least one traumatic event experienced in the past through LIET-S (Life Incidence of Traumatic Events-Student Form, LIET-S) questionnaire, at the same time, whose scores on the PCL-C(PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version)questionnaire exceed and equal to 50 were labeled high trauma participants, and the students whose scores on the PCL-C questionnaire were below 50 were labeled as low trauma participants.
The results shows: The stroop-interference between the two groups were significant, the high trauma group detected word color more slowly than the low; The two types of stimulus conditions between the two groups were significant, the color—word congruent were more slowly than incongruent; The stroop-interference in high trauma subjects were significant, the male detected word color more slowly than the female; We find the significant interaction in groups ? sex and stimulus type ? sex.
We found that the Stroop effect of subjects with high trauma of the cognitive interference was greater than that of the low trauma group; the Stroop effect of the consistent task was greater than that of the inconsistent task. The results showed that women with high trauma were more likely to be affected by cognitive interference, and the type of Stroop task also had some effect on trauma participants.
Key words
Stroop effect /
Tauma /
Cognitive interference
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A Study of Stroop Interference Effect and Gender Difference for Individuals with High and Low Trauma[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2017, 40(3): 741-745
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