Abstract: Cognition is often affected by emotion. Since their respective neural mechanisms are independent to some extent and they mature unevenly, the relationship between cognition and emotion changes over the life course. The connection between cognition and emotion is an important issue in developmental psychology. The present study used subliminal emotional STROOP paradigm to explore the developmental character of this connection.
Method
One hundred and sixty three subjects were recruited, including 5, 6, 7 year-old children and adults. The task was to name the color of a square following an emotional picture presented subliminally (with positive, negative, and neutral facial expression). Response time and error rates were collected. The differences in participants’ response time and error rates between the emotional and neutral condition were regarded as the emotional STROOP effects. The data was analyzed with repeated-measure two-factorial ANOVAs, in which emotional picture was used as a within subject factor and subject gender as between subject factor.
Results
With increasing age, the emotional STROOP effects decreased. The 5-year-olds spent significantly longer time to identify colors after they were exposed to crying facial expression pictures. The 6- and 7-year-old made more mistakes in identifying the colors when they were shown smiling facial expression pictures. However, the adults did not show any STROOP effect. Neither main effect of gender, nor interaction of emotional picture and gender was found.
Conclusions
The emotional STROOP effects were inversely related to age. This result suggests that people’s emotion control ability and its neural mechanism are based on frontal lobe maturity . The STROOP effects caused by positive or negative emotion have different behavioral forms and psychological mechanisms. Positive emotion would cause the increase of participants’ errors, while negative emotion would delay participants’ response. Participants’ focus on speed or accuracy moderated what kind of STROOP effect to appear

Key words: emotion, STROOP, development, subliminal