Relevancia del Paradigma de Interferencia Verbal para la Medición Emocional en Psicología

• Autores: Elissa López González, María del Rocío Hernández Pozo
• Localización: Acta comportamentalia: revista latina de análisis del comportamiento, ISSN 0188-8145, Vol. 32, Nº. 3, 2024, págs. 401-421
• Idioma: español
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Relevance of the Verbal Interference Paradigm for Emotional Measurement in Psychology
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• Resumen
  • español

    El paradigma emocional de interferencia verbal se ha establecido como una herramienta fundamental en la investigación psicológica y clínica por su capacidad de explorar temas que pueden no ser accesibles mediante cuestionarios. Este artículo aborda diversas aplicaciones del paradigma emocional Stroop, destacando su uso en el ámbito de la medicina conductual, así como su aplicación experimental. Este paradigma parece revelar sesgos cognitivos y emocionales útiles para identificar fuentes de trauma que pueden servir para comprender trastornos psiquiátricos, gravedad de síntomas y adherencia al tratamiento. También es útil para estudiar creencias individuales, preferencias y respuestas emocionales en temas sensibles como género, religión y los estereotipos sociales. Esta capacidad de acceder a respuestas más sinceras e inconscientes (Zheng et al., 2024) tiene aplicaciones significativas en investigación y práctica clínica, permitiendo una comprensión más profunda y precisa de la cognición humana en áreas de relevancia social y cultural. La tarea Stroop también presenta otras características metodológicas atractivas que lo hacen una opción prometedora para la investigación aplicada. Se ofrece una revisión histórica no exhaustiva del procedimiento, de sus aplicaciones y sus alcances y se compara con otros procedimientos experimentales para la medición de sesgos con un componente emocional.

  • English

    The Stroop task stands as a vital instrument in psychological and clinical research, as it delves into areas often difficult to reach using mere questionnaire-based approaches. Its essence lies in measuring the interference of color stimuli when reading words, and it became a way to examine the resolution of interference and selective attention. The proficiency required by the Stroop task allows us to focus on specific environmental cues while mitigating distractions that could thwart our goals. Performing the task competently requires engaging cognitive control, which involves regulating our thoughts and actions in alignment with our overall goals. It is postulated that they require two distinct word recognition processes within the Stroop paradigm. The initial phase that involves automatic lexical access, followed by an optional stage of strategic allocation of limited cognitive resources that allows choosing the response to be issued. The emotional interference of the Stroop task emerges as particularly sensitive to individual variations in the emotional weight of words, particularly within clinical contexts. The manifestation of interference effects in threat-related Stroop words provides insights into the automaticity of emotional processing and its interaction with cognitive control mechanisms. This article delves into the multifaceted applications of the Stroop paradigm, highlighting its usefulness in emotional, clinical, and experimental domains. The versatility of this paradigm has been fundamental to investigate disorders such as generalized anxiety, depression, or certain phobias, offering a nuanced perspective of the emotional panorama of individuals. It is proposed that this emotional Stroop paradigm serves as a revealing lens through which cognitive and emotional biases in mental health can be revealed, shedding light on the sources of trauma, psychiatric disorders, and treatment adherence. In addition, it allows us to address topics such as individual beliefs, preferences, and emotional responses on sensitive topics such as gender and religion, offering deep insights into social attitudes and stereotypes. By adapting word selection to match specific pathologies, immediate concerns, prejudices, topics of interest, words related to culture shock, among other modifications, the Stroop emotional paradigm facilitates accurate diagnostic evaluations. Furthermore, due to its non-intrusive nature, it becomes an objective diagnostic tool, free of possible biases derived from interpersonal dynamics.