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PDF (PhD Thesis Susan Chipchase) - Nottingham eTheses ...

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exposure paradigm. In chapter 2 we found that prior exposure to stimuli had no<br />

influence on judgements of preference for negative, neutral or positive<br />

photographs from the IAPs database (Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2001). In this<br />

case, we concluded that due to the complex nature of these stimuli preference<br />

judgements were based on the meaning conveyed by the photographs and<br />

therefore this left no opportunity for the influence of prior exposure. In contrast<br />

in this chapter we will be examining preference judgements to neutral pictures<br />

which formed the background of the stimuli and therefore it should be less<br />

likely that preference is influenced by semantic judgements.<br />

Carry-over of emotion across stimuli<br />

One aspect of experimental design which relates to the emotion<br />

experienced by participants is the carry-over of emotion across stimuli. It is<br />

possible that when presenting emotional stimuli to participants there are effects<br />

which continue onwards after presentation of that particular stimulus<br />

(McKenna & Sharma, 2004; Waters, Sayette, & Wertz, 2003). One way in<br />

which these type of effects have been investigated is by using a variant of the<br />

Stroop (1935) task where participants must name the colour in which words are<br />

presented. In the emotional Stroop effect, emotional words are presented in<br />

different font colours and participants are asked to name the colour whilst<br />

ignoring the word. This is often slower for emotional than neutral words (for a<br />

review see Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996).<br />

One factor which has been investigated is the impact of stimuli order on<br />

the Stroop effect. Slower responses to certain types of words have been<br />

demonstrated in blocked groups of concern-related stimuli but these effects can<br />

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