Further investigations of inhibitory mechanisms in attention

Three experiments employed a discrete-trials version of the Stroop task to investigate further the claim that there are inhibitory mechanisms in selective attention (Neill, 1977). The results indicated that the evidence supporting the inhibitory theory (i.e., the diminished availability of distractor responses) cannot be explained by subjects’ attempts to physically match successive stimuli (Lowe, 1979). In light of all the available evidence, it was suggested that the suppression effect does not index attentional inhibition, but may be attributed to a problem of code coordination (Keele & Neill, 1978).