Hypervigilance in borderline disorder: A test with the emotional Stroop paradigm

The hypothesis of cognitive theories of hypervigilance for signs of danger in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) was tested with the emotional Stroop task. BPD patients (n = 15), Cluster C personality disorder (PD) patients (n = 12), and nonpatient controls (n = 15) diagnosed with SCID-I and SCID-II interviews color-named emotional and nonemotional words presented in three colors on a personal computer screen, first in a subliminal condition (words presented for a very short, individually calibrated time followed by a mask to prevent conscious recognition of the word) and then in a supraliminal condition. Four classes of negative words were used, including three classes of BPD-specific words (negative views of others, sexual abuse-related words, negative self-descriptors) and one class of general negative words that was unrelated to BPD pathology. In contrast to the nonpatient controls, both BPD and Cluster C patients showed interference caused by supraliminally presented emotional words. There was no difference between the clinical groups and there was no evidence for specificity of the effect for certain stimulus classes. The subliminal Stroop failed to yield any significant effect. Results are interpreted as evidence for the presence of a relatively crude hypervigilance for any emotionally negative stimulus in both BPD and Cluster C PDs.