A modified Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST) to assess the affective value of pictorial stimuli: No influence of age and educational level

There is a range of concepts that are relevant to emotion research that may not be readily captured in words. Therefore, this experiment tested whether the Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST: De Houwer, 2003) can be modified to assess automatic affect using pictorial stimuli. In addition, since the EAST is a relatively complex task, we tested whether the EAST can also be successfully employed in community samples. Participants (n = 60) who varied considerably in age and educational level completed a pictorial version of the EAST. Results show that the pictorial EAST is sensitive to the valence of pictorial stimuli and has an acceptable reliability. However, this pattern of results emerged most clearly in the error data. A task-shifting account for these findings is discussed. The findings underline the potential usefulness of the EAST as a tool for assessing automatic affect, but urge caution with interpreting data that include high error rates.