The performance of clinically depressed children and adolescents on the modified Stroop paradigm

The study investigated selective processing of emotional information in childhood depression using a computerised version of the modified Stroop colour naming task. Three groups of children and adolescents—clinically depressed (n = 19), patients with mixed depression and anxiety (n = 19), and normal controls (n = 26)—were required to name the colours of depression-related, threat-related, trauma-related, happy, and categorised neutral words. Normal subjects, compared with the patient groups, exhibited faster colour naming overall. There were no significant differences on the colour naming of different categories of words and the performance across the three groups was not significantly different for different categories of words.