Impact of childhood trauma, alexithymia, dissociation, and emotion suppression on emotional Stroop task

Objective

Attentional bias to emotion- and illness-related information plays a prominent role in many mental disorders, particularly major depressive disorder and anxiety disorders. Using the emotional Stroop task we investigated which variables beyond aspects of patients' psychopathology might influence reaction times and interference in the Stroop test.

Methods

We investigated 82 psychosomatic inpatients and 39 healthy controls. Diagnosis of depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and somatoform disorders were established using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. Severity of depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, as well as experiences of childhood trauma, alexithymia, dissociation and emotion suppression were assessed via questionnaires. The emotional Stroop test was performed by using neutral and negative words, words related to depression, anxiety and somatization, respectively, and individually chosen words, which were related to the main problems of the participants.

Results

In multivariate regression analyses, reaction times were best predicted by self-reported experiences of childhood trauma. Interference, by contrast, was predicted by emotion suppression, but only for negative words, anxiety-related words and individually relevant words. Against our hypothesis, measurements of psychopathology were not associated with Stroop performance.

Conclusions

The present study provides further support for the idea that the experience of childhood trauma influences adult neuropsychological performance. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the ability to suppress emotions may be an important predictor of attentional bias.