The modified stroop effect mse , in which participants show delayed color naming to trauma specific words is one of the most widely cited findings in the literature pertaining to cognitive bias in posttraumatic stress disorder ptsd. The current study used a novel approach dissertation abstract review dar to review the presence of the mse in dissertation abstracts. A review of dissertations that used the modified stroop task in a ptsd sample revealed that only 8% of the studies found delayed reaction times to trauma specific words in participants with ptsd. The most common finding 75% was for no ptsd specific effects in color naming trauma relevant words. This ratio is significantly lower than ratios found in the peer reviewed literature, but even in the peer reviewed literature only 44% of controlled studies found the modified stroop effect mse. keywords: modified stroop, attentional bias, ptsd, trauma, dissertation abstract review modified versions of the original stroop 1935 task have been widely used to demonstrate biases in the processing of information in a range of psychological disorders.

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In these modified stroop tasks, participants are shown a series of printed words that may or may not be relevant to their psychological disorder. The color that the words are printed in vary, and the participants x02019 primary task is to name the color the word is printed in. There have been multiple studies, across a range of psychological disorders, that have reported delays in naming the color of words related to aspects of psychological disorders williams, mathews, macleod, 1996 macleod, 2005 .

Authors refer to this delay in color naming as the interference or modifed stroop effect mse. It has been argued that the mse represents an attentional bias increased selective attention to the processing of disorder relevant information or an inability to inhibit disorder relevant information even when such information is incidental to a task macleod, 2005 mcnally, 1998 such a bias in information processing, if it exists, is accepted to be a meaningful cognitive aspect of psychopathology. It has been argued, for example, that increased attention to disorder relevant information could underpin and sustain cognitive biases in depressive, anxiety, and eating disorders dagleish x026 power, 2004 macleod, 2005 .

In such models, selective attention to disorder specific information would enhance and prioritize processing of such stimuli and thus further exacerbate the condition. In an individual with depression, for example, an automatic or unsuppressed bias for depressive stimuli would only worsen a negative world view. For these reasons, cognitive biases, such as those demonstrated during the emotional stroop task, have been proposed to play a role in the etiology and maintenance of a range of psychological disorders.

It is broadly accepted that the modified stroop effect also exists in posttraumatic stress disorder ptsd , an anxiety disorder that is precipitated by a psychological trauma and results in symptoms of re experiencing, avoidance/numbing, and hyperarousal apa, 2004. Further, such interference is thought to be present in individuals with ptsd but not in individuals who have been traumatized but do not have ptsd x02014 thus demonstrating the specificity of the effect to the disorder ptsd and not the traumatic experience itself. These studies, in general, conclude that individuals with ptsd show trauma specific interference effects representative of attention bias towards trauma related stimuli.

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Despite decidedly mixed evidence, the general consensus in the literature from the early work to the present seems to be that the stroop interference is robust in ptsd. For example, buckley and colleagues 2003 state that a x0201c very reliable phenomenon across numerous studies with traumatized individuals is that patients with ptsd show delayed vocal response latencies to trauma relevant stimuli relative to threat stimuli that are not trauma related p. 20 state the x0201c use of the emotional stroop test has shown that trauma related words are a sensitive measure of clinical state in ptsd p. X0201d mcnally 1998 reports that these x0201c studies have repeatedly confirmed that ptsd participants exhibit more interference for trauma words than for other words, and exhibit more interference for trauma words than do trauma exposed people without the disorder p. X0201d likewise, negative effects are often interpreted as being in conflict with the existing literature. For example, bremner and colleagues 2004 did not find the stroop interference effect and report x0201c unlike prior studies, this study did not find a difference in response time to emotional versus color stroop in ptsd versus control subjects p. X0201d this study undertook a novel approach to examining the robustness of the mse in ptsd.

In particular, we reviewed all dissertation abstracts that covered the topics of x0201c stroop x0201d and x0201c ptsd x0201d x02014 a process we refer to as dissertation abstract review dar. Given that all dissertation abstracts are published, dar has the distinct advantage of avoiding publication bias or the x0201c file drawer effect x0201d x02014 a well documented tendency for studies with non significant findings to not make it to press rosenthal, 1979 rosenthal, 1986 dickersin, 1990. Historically, a number of reasons have been identified for publication bias including the tendency for authors to only submit significant findings for publication, journal editor x02019 s biases towards positive findings, and the fact that commercially sponsored research is more likely to be published if the results are supportive of the product gilbody, song, eastwood, x026 sutton, 20 . Dar represents the possibility of estimating the x0201c base rate x0201d of a finding prior to the pressures of publication bias. Dissertations, therefore, represent a unique and underutilized recourse for reviewing a literature. Of greatest importance, is the fact that all dissertation abstracts are published by dissertation abstracts international x0a9 regardless of their outcome or significance. What little selection or review may occur in dissertations will appear at the level of the dissertation committee x02014 a valuable source of quality control that would presumably reject a dissertation for methodological flaws or a serious misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the data.

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X0201d the first estimate is based on the discrepancy between the x0201c base rates x0201d of an effect in dissertations and the published rates found in the peer reviewed literature. The second estimate is based on tracking the progress of dissertations into the peer reviewed literature. Not all dissertations make it to press and the percentage of dissertations with x0201c negative x0201d findings that make it to press x02014 particularly in comparison to those with x0201c positive x0201d findings x02014 can be an approximation of the number of studies that get x0201c shelved x0201d based on their outcomes. In addition to dar, the study proposes an analysis of the x0201c top drawer effect x0201d x02014 a term coined to refer to the fact that positive findings are more likely to be published in journals with higher impact. Publication bias is only one mechanism that may distort perception on a particular topic.

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A misperception of an effect may partly arise in that positive findings are more likely to be published in more widely read and widely cited journals. This may lead to a greater sense of an effect x02019 s potency than exists in reality. By comparing the impact ratings of journals that published articles with positive mse x02019 s in comparison to the impact ratings of journals that published articles with negative mse x02019 s would give some indication of differential exposure based on outcome. The first is to establish the x0201c base rate x0201d of the modified stroop effect in ptsd by evaluating dissertations for the presence of ptsd specific effects in the emotional stroop.

Second, we will look at the presence of the modified stroop effect in the peer reviewed literature as an estimate of the pressures applied by the file drawer effect. Finally, we will compare journal impact factors for studies that report positive versus negative mse findings. Dissertations abstracts were found for review using psycinfo x0ae and medline x0ae and the keywords x0201c ptsd x0201d and x0201c stroop. The search identified 25 dissertation abstracts that met the initial requirements of the search terms. Of these 25, only 12 ran a modified stroop task in which traumatized participants with ptsd were compared to traumatized participants without ptsd.