An emotional Stroop task with faces and words. A comparison of young and older adults

Abstract Antecedents Given the contradictions of previous studies on the changes in attentional responses produced in aging a Stroop emotional task was proposed to compare young and older adults to words or faces with an emotional valence. Method The words happy or sad were superimposed on faces that express the emotion of happiness or sadness. The emotion expressed by the word and the face could agree or not (cued and uncued trials, respectively). 85 young and 66 healthy older adults had to identify both faces and words separately, and the interference between the two types of stimuli was examined. Results An interference effect was observed for both types of stimuli in both groups. There was more interference on positive faces and words than on negative stimuli. Conclusions Older adults had more difficulty than younger in focusing on positive uncued trials, whereas there was no difference across samples on negative uncued trials.