Measuring Preschoolers' Inhibitory Control Using the Black/White Stroop

The Day/Night Stroop is a widely used measure of inhibitory control with preschoolers that requires them to respond ‘day’ to a picture of a moon and ‘night’ to a picture of a sun (Gerstadt, Hong, & Diamond, 1994). However, we argue that the nature of the relation between the stimuli and required responses requires more than inhibitory control. In the present study we compared 51 three‐ to five‐year‐olds' performance on the Day/Night and the Black/White Stroop alongside other measures of Executive Function and language. As predicted, we found that children make inhibitory errors on the Black/White, while they make both inhibitory and memory errors on the Day/Night. As a result, the Day/Night Stroop underestimates the inhibitory control abilities of some children. Further, we also found that performance on the Black/White task was strongly related to performance on another inhibitory control task, while performance on the Day/Night was not. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.