| Childhood interest in fire, and the involvement with fire that often derives from this interest, are critical clinical issues that can have serious implications for society as a whole. It is, therefore, of considerable import that we have effective tools for identifying and measuring youthful fire interest. The emotional Stroop task is an experimental paradigm that has proven to be effective at measuring the information-processing biases of individuals drawn from diverse clinical and nonclinical populations. The purpose of the present study was to test whether a computer-based fire-specific emotional Stroop task, as well as associated Stroop-stimulus recognition and interest rating tasks, can be used effectively to measure an information-processing bias for fire-related stimuli (operationally defined here as fire interest). Clinic-referred and nonreferred adolescents (aged 13-16 years) first completed a practice task followed by a pictorial "Fire Stroop"—an emotional Stroop task that involves the presentation of neutral and fire-related pictures. Participants then completed a Stroop Picture Recognition task, a Stroop Picture Level-of-Interest Rating task, a standard Stroop color-word task, the child version of the TAPP-C Fire Interest Questionnaire (FIQ-C), and a standardized test of verbal and visual comprehension. Results showed that the Fire Stroop is unique in its effectiveness as an information-processing measure of juvenile interest in fire. The findings also indicated that fire interest, as inferred from the Fire Stroop, is greater among adolescents referred for firesetting than it is among clinic-referred and nonreferred controls. Additionally, study findings revealed there to be a lack of correspondence between the Fire Stroop's information-processing indices of fire interest and a self-report index of fire interest derived from the FIQ-C. This result was taken as indication not just of the shortcomings of self-report, but also of the Fire Stroop's potential as an objective method for tapping into youthful interest in fire. Collectively, these findings point to the viability of alternative methods for measuring fire interest. These results also contribute further to the conceptualization of juvenile firesetters, draw attention to the prevalence of youthful interest in fire, and argue for more intervention programs that will address fire interest and fire involvement among youths. |
