Interlinguistic conflict: Word–word Stroop with first and second language colour words

The congruency (or Stroop) effect is a standard observation of slower and less accurate colour identification to incongruent trials (e.g. “red” in green) relative to congruent trials (e.g. “red” in red). This effect has been observed in a word–word variant of the task, when both the distracter (e.g. “red”) and target (e.g. “green”) are colour words. The Stroop task has also been used to study the congruency effect between two languages in bilinguals. The typical finding is that the congruency effect for L1 words is larger than that for L2 words. For the first time, the present report aims to extend this finding to a word–word variant of the bilingual Stroop task. In two experiments, French monolinguals performed a bilingual word–word Stroop task in which target word language, language match, and congruency between the distracter and target were manipulated. The critical manipulation across two experiments concerned the target language. In Experiment 1, target language was manipulated between groups, with either French (L1) or English (L2) target colour words. In Experiment 2, target words from both languages were intermixed. In both experiments, the congruency effect was larger when the distracter and target were from the same language (language match) than when they were from different languages (language mismatch). Our findings suggested that this congruency effect mostly depends on the language match between the distracter and target, rather than on a target language. It also did not seem to matter whether the language-mismatching distracter was or was not a potential response alternative. Semantic activation of languages in bilinguals and its implications on target identification are discussed.

     

Colour-identification of differentially valenced words in anxiety

Abstract

Two groups of individuals, one high in trait anxiety and the other low in trait anxiety, performed a Stroop task in which threat, neutral, and pleasant words were presented. The results indicated clear differences between the high- and low-trait groups in their performance on this task. The low-trait group's performance was similar for all three types of sitmuli, whereas the high-trait group's responses were fastest for pleasant stimuli and slowest for threat-related stimuli. A recognition task to examine incidental learning of the “irrelevant” Stroop words showed that whilst the high-trait group had a stronger tendency to respond positively to all trials (critical and distractor) than the low-trait group, there were no differences in sensitivity between the two groups.     

Attentional control adjustments in Eriksen and Stroop task performance can be independent of response conflict

In the Eriksen flanker and colour-word Stroop tasks, the response time (RT) difference between incongruent and congruent trials is smaller following incongruent trials than following congruent trials: the “Gratton effect” (Gratton, Coles, & Donchin, 1992). According to the prevailing conflict-monitoring theory (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001), the Gratton effect reflects attentional control adjustment following response conflict on incongruent trials. However, because previous studies compared incongruent and congruent trials, it remains unclear to what extent the Gratton effect is driven by incongruent rather than congruent trials. To resolve this issue, we included neutral trials in addition to incongruent and congruent trials in the Eriksen (Experiment 1) and Stroop (Experiment 2) tasks. Participants responded manually and vocally in both tasks. Moreover, we assessed responding to Stroop stimuli that were preceded by neutral cues or by incongruent- or congruent-predicting cues (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, the RT difference between incongruent and congruent trials was larger for postcongruent trials than for postincongruent and postneutral trials. These findings suggest that control adjustments can be independent of response conflict, challenging conflict-monitoring theory.     

A reach-to-touch investigation on the nature of reading in the Stroop task

In a Stroop task, participants can be presented with a color name printed in color and need to classify the print color while ignoring the word. The Stroop effect is typically calculated as the difference in mean response time (RT) between congruent (e.g., the word RED printed in red) and incongruent (GREEN in red) trials. Delta plots compare not just mean performance, but the entire RT distributions of congruent and incongruent conditions. However, both mean RT and delta plots have some limitations. Arm-reaching trajectories allow a more continuous measure for assessing the time course of the Stroop effect. We compared arm movements to congruent and incongruent stimuli in a standard Stroop task and a control task that encourages processing of each and every word. The Stroop effect emerged over time in the control task, but not in the standard Stroop, suggesting words may be processed differently in the two tasks.     

The effect of Stroop interference on the categorical perception of color

In two experiments, we examined the effects of Stroop interference on the categorical perception (CP; better cross-category than within-category discrimination) of color. Using a successive two-alternative forced choice recognition paradigm (deciding which of two stimuli was identical to a previously presented target), which combined to-be-remembered colors with congruent and incongruent Stroop words, we found that congruent color words facilitated CP, whereas incongruent color words reduced CP. However, this was the case only when Stroop interference was presented together with the target color, but not when Stroop stimuli were introduced at the test stage. This suggests that target name, but not test name generation, affects CP. Target name generation may be important for CP because it acts as a category prime, which, in turn, facilitates cross-category discrimination.     

初中生学习成绩与成就STROOP干扰

取某普通中学初中学生129人,使用修正的Stroop任务,测试被试对积极关联词语、消极关联词语和中性词语的颜色命名的反应时间,结果发现,初中学生对成就关联词语的反应时间比中性词语长,特别是在消极关联词语方面,差异显著,表现出了典型的Stroop干扰;学习好的同学在所有词语方面的反应时间都比学习成绩差的同学反应时间长,特别是在成就关联词语方面,差异极显著,学习好的同学表现出了更加明显的Stroop干扰.学习成绩与成就关联词语的反应时间有显著的相关.女同学对所有词语的反应时间都比男同学时间长,特别是在高成就反应时间上,二者差异显著,女同学比男同学有更加明显的成就Stroop干扰.     

Attentional control adjustments in Eriksen and Stroop task performance can be independent of response conflict

In the Eriksen flanker and colour-word Stroop tasks, the response time (RT) difference between incongruent and congruent trials is smaller following incongruent trials than following congruent trials: the "Gratton effect" (Gratton, Coles, & Donchin, 1992). According to the prevailing conflict-monitoring theory (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001), the Gratton effect reflects attentional control adjustment following response conflict on incongruent trials. However, because previous studies compared incongruent and congruent trials, it remains unclear to what extent the Gratton effect is driven by incongruent rather than congruent trials. To resolve this issue, we included neutral trials in addition to incongruent and congruent trials in the Eriksen (Experiment 1) and Stroop (Experiment 2) tasks. Participants responded manually and vocally in both tasks. Moreover, we assessed responding to Stroop stimuli that were preceded by neutral cues or by incongruent- or congruent-predicting cues (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, the RT difference between incongruent and congruent trials was larger for postcongruent trials than for postincongruent and postneutral trials. These findings suggest that control adjustments can be independent of response conflict, challenging conflict-monitoring theory.     

Engaging the motor system with masked orthographic primes: A kinematic analysis

We report two experiments in which participants categorized target words (e.g., BLOOD or CUCUMBER) according to their canonical colour of red or green by pointing to a red square on the left or a green square on the right. Unbeknownst to the participants, the target words were preceded by the prime words “red” or “green”. We found that the curvature of participants’ pointing trajectories was greater following incongruent primes (green–BLOOD) than it was following congruent primes, indicating that individuals initiated a response on the basis of the prime and then corrected that response mid-flight. This finding establishes that the processing of masked orthographic stimuli extends down to include the formulation of an overt manual response.     

Differential cerebral involvement in the cognitive functioning of bilinguals

The cognitive processing strategies of two groups of French-English bilinguals were studied by means of an auditory Stroop test designed to evaluate cerebral hemispheric involvement. An “early bilingual” group were bilingual before the age of 5, and a “late bilingual” group were bilingual after the age of 10. Stimuli were words uttered in pitches that were related to word meanings either congruently (as in the word “high” uttered in a high pitch) or incongruently (the word “haute” uttered in a low pitch). In one condition, subjects were to differentiate low from high pitches, disregarding meaning, while in a second condition, they were to disregard pitch and respond to word meanings. Measures of field independence were also taken. Results of data analyses suggest that male early bilinguals—the most field independent subgroup—process meaning efficiently in both cerebral hemispheres, but process pitch better in the right hemisphere. However, male late bilinguals and female bilinguals, both early and late, process meaning more rapidly in the right cerebral hemisphere and pitch equally rapidly in both hemispheres. The findings are interpreted as reflecting hemisphere-based strategy and sex differences in information-processing by the two bilingual groups.     

Stimulus congruence and stimulus-response compatibility: Two variables disentangled in an auditory reaction time task

Abstract

Stimulus—response (S-R) compatibility was a tem fmt used by Wtts and Seeger (1953) to describe effcts observed on reaction time (RT) when the stimulus—response relationship was varied, as in the following instructions: “move to tbe right when the stimulus appears on the right” (compatible) or “move to the left when the stimulus appears on the right” (incompatible). This term was later employed in a broader sense (Simon & Rudell, 1967) with paradigms involving elaborate stimuli, such as the verbal command ‘RIGHT’ delivered to the right tar (compatible) or to the left ear (incompatible). In such paradigms. subjects respond faster when the response is delivered on the same side as the stimulus (the so-called “Simon effect”). It has been shown, however, that this effect could be reversed under some circumstanas in the visual domain. In this paper, we report data showing that it can also be reversed in the auditory domain when using the above-mentioned verbal commands. This brings further evidence that stimulus-response compatibility and the Simon effect difier in essence, with the latter effect reflecting the influence of stimulus congruence, the correspondence relationship borne by the two simultaneous characteristics of the stimulus. Stimulus congruence and stimulus-response compatibility had indeed independent influences on RT, which in a serially connected information-processing modcl would imply that they act upon independent stages.     

Arrows don’t look at you: Qualitatively different attentional mechanisms triggered by gaze and arrows

Eye gaze conveys rich information concerning the states of mind of others, playing a critical role in social interactions, signaling internal states, and guiding others’ attention. On the basis of its social significance, some researchers have proposed that eye gaze may represent a unique attentional stimulus. However, contrary to this notion, the majority of the literature has shown indistinguishable attentional effects when eye gaze and arrows have been used as cues. Taking a different approach, in this study we aimed at finding qualitative attentional differences between gazes and arrows when they were used as targets instead of as cues. We used a spatial Stroop task, in which participants were required to identify the direction of eyes or arrows presented to the left or the right of a fixation point. The results showed that the two types of stimuli led to opposite spatial interference effects, with arrows producing faster reaction times when the stimulus direction was congruent with the stimulus position (a typical spatial Stroop effect), and eye gaze producing faster reaction times when it was incongruent (a “reversed” spatial Stroop effect). This reversed Stroop is interpreted as an eye-contact effect, therefore revealing the unique nature of eyes as special social-attention stimuli.     

Attention, spatial integration, and the tail of response time distributions in Stroop task performance

A few studies have examined selective attention in Stroop task performance through ex-Gaussian analyses of response time (RT) distributions. It has remained unclear whether the tail of the RT distribution in vocal responding reflects spatial integration of relevant and irrelevant attributes, as suggested by Spieler, Balota, and Faust (2000). Here, two colour-word Stroop experiments with vocal responding are reported in which the spatial relation between colour and word was manipulated. Participants named colours (e.g., green; say "green") while trying to ignore distractors that were incongruent or congruent words (e.g., red or green), or neutral series of Xs. The vocal RT was measured. Colour words in colour, white words superimposed onto colour rectangles (Experiment 1), and colour rectangles combined with auditory words (Experiment 2) yielded Stroop effects in both the leading edge and the tail of the RT distributions. These results indicate that spatial integration is not necessary for effects in the tail to occur in vocal responding. It is argued that the findings are compatible with an association of the tail effects with task conflict.     

The influence of spatial representation on valence judgements: An event-related potential study

The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the nature of space-valence congruency effects. We presented participants with up or down arrows at the centre of the screen and then asked participants to identify whether the following target words had the emotional valence. The target words included positive emotional words (e.g., “happy” and “delight”), negative emotional words (e.g., “sad” and “depressive”) and neutral words (e.g., “history” and “country”). Behavioural data showed that the positive targets were identified faster when they are primed by up arrows than when primed by down arrows, whereas the negative targets were identified faster when they are primed by down arrows than when primed by up arrows. The ERP analysis showed larger P2 amplitudes were found in the congruent condition (i.e., the positive targets following up arrows or the negative targets following down arrows) than in the incongruent condition (i.e., the positive targets following down arrows or the negative targets following up arrows). Furthermore, larger N400 amplitudes were found in the incongruent condition compared with the congruent condition. Moreover, larger LPC amplitudes were found in the congruent condition compared with the incongruent condition. Therefore, in addition to replicating the space-valence congruency effects in a neutral/emotional judgement task, our study also extended previous studies by showing that spatial information modulates the processing of the emotional words at multiple stages.     

Cognitive processing of personally relevant information

Abstract

Subjects performed an idiographic, computerised version of the modified Stroop colour-naming task after having undergone a film-induced mood manipulation designed to produce either anxiety, elation, or a neutral mood. The Stroop stimuli were words related either to the subject's positive current concerns (e.g. goals, interests), to the subject's negative current concerns (e.g. personal worries), or to neither. The results indicated that words strongly related to subject's positive as well as to negative current concerns produced significantly more Stroop interference than did words unrelated or weakly related to their current concerns. Although the films strongly influenced the subjects' moods in predicted directions initially, mood changes were largely not maintained throughout the experiment. Thus, it is not surprising that no significant interactions with word type were found. These results indicate that the “emotional Stroop effect” occurs in normal subjects as well as in anxious patients, and occurs with positive as well as with negative material of strong personal relevance.     

Presenting two incongruent color words on a single trial does not alter Stroop interference

Two experiments showed that having two incongruent words present on a single Stroop trial (e.g., bothred andgreen in blue, say “blue”) did not alter interference relative to having only one incongruent word. This was true whether the two incongruent words were presented successively at several stimulus onset asynchronies (Experiment 1) or simultaneously in adjacent positions (Experiment 2). We argue that the first word captures attention and “locks out” others, preventing additional interference.     

The interactive effects of listwide control, item-based control, and working memory capacity on Stroop performance

Hypothesized top-down and bottom-up mechanisms of control within conflict-rich environments were examined by presenting participants with a Stroop task in which specific words were usually presented in either congruent or incongruent colors. Incongruent colors were either frequently (high contingency) or infrequently (low contingency) paired with the word. These items were embedded within lists consisting of either 100% congruent or 100% incongruent filler items to create mostly congruent or mostly incongruent lists. Results indicated a significant item-specific congruency effect, which was largest for high contingency responses and within mostly congruent lists. In addition, a significant listwide congruency effect was obtained, and this interacted with working memory capacity (WMC). There were larger listwide congruency effects for low WMC individuals. Finally, the pattern of Stroop interference across lists for low WMC individuals was dependent upon the congruency of the preceding trial. These results support multiple forms of cognitive control, as well as contingency learning, as mechanisms underlying proportion congruence effects in Stroop and other conflict tasks. These findings are interpreted within Braver, Gray, and Burgess's (2007) dual mechanisms of control theory.     

A developmental study of the auditory Stroop effect

A pediatric auditory version of the Stroop procedure was developed and administered to 48 normal children from 3 to 6 years of age. Our purpose was to define the developmental course characterizing interaction between auditory and semantic speech dimensions in young children. The procedure was a reaction time (RT) task that required children to respond as quickly and as accurately as possible to words spoken by a male or a female voice. Children were instructed to ignore what was said and to push the "Mommy" button if Mommy was talking or the "Daddy" button if Daddy was talking. Performance was obtained for words with neutral, congruent, and conflicting semantic content. Preschool children manifested processing dependencies that were similar to those observed in adults on the visual Stroop procedure. Conflict between semantic and auditory dimensions significantly increased RT and congruence between the two dimensions significantly decreased RT relative to the neutral condition. The pattern of results indicated that the meaning of words was processed automatically in the normal children. The magnitude of the Stroop effect reflected developmental change with increasing age.     

Stroop interference with response,comparison, and encoding stages in a sentence-picture comparison task

The paper discusses a Stroop variant of the word-picture comparison task analyzed by Chase and Clark (1971). The locatives above or below were printed at the center of a reference square, and Ss reported “Yes” if there was a word or an array of Xs in the location specified and “No” if there was not. Under the control (Xs) conditions, above displays were classified faster than below displays and true displays faster than false displays. These effects were unaltered when the words “yes” or “no” or “right” or “wrong” were printed in place of the Xs, although there was a small overall increase in response latency under these Stroop conditions that was independent of agreement or disagreement between the distractor and the response to be made. When the locatives up and down were printed on the display, a substantial Stroop effect was observed, and the above-below and true-false effects were eliminated. These results are discussed in relation to theories about the nature of Stroop interference and processes involved in sentence-picture comparisons.     

道德的轻与重：道德的重量具身效应及隐喻的调节作用

本研究采用行为反应时和事件相关电位(ERP)探讨道德的重量具身效应及“重量-道德”隐喻联结对该效应的调节作用。参考内隐联想测验的逻辑，采用联合分类反应任务，在默认的“重量-道德”隐喻表征情境（实验1）和道德垂直空间隐喻的启动情境（实验2）中，要求被试分别使用轻鼠标和重鼠标对道德/不道德词进行分类判断，考察鼠标重量对道德概念的加工所产生的影响。结果显示，在默认情境中，“重-道德，轻-不道德”的联合分类条件比“轻-道德，重-不道德”条件的分类反应时更短，并伴随有更大的脑电晚期正成分（LPC），而在启动道德垂直空间隐喻后，两种联合分类条件下的反应时和LPC结果出现反转。本研究结果表明道德概念的加工会受到重量经验的影响，“重量-道德”具身效应具有心理现实性，且重量概念与道德概念的隐喻联结引导并调节了这种具身效应。     

Simultaneous motor and verbal processing of visual information in a modified Stroop test

Color patches could simultaneously be manually counted and conflicting color words named in the time required for one of the tasks alone. The independence of verbal and nonverbal information processing resembles “split-brain” behavior. Naming color patches while counting color words took more time than would have been required for doing the individual tasks successively, indicating response competition in the standard Stroop test. Form or location stimuli substituted for color words reduced interference when naming color patches.