Stroop interference with Sesame Street Characters

The Stroop task is a robust task, making it a useful assessment of automatic processing, it is also associated with reading ability. This limits the utility of the Stroop task to children with a sufficient reading level. Non-word Stroop tasks may be alternatives for non-readers or beginning readers. For example, Prevor and Diamond (2005) showed that Stroop interference could be obtained using pictures (e.g., heart, frog). This study explored using Sesame Street characters to create Stroop interference. Elmo, Kermit, and Cookie Monster were shown in red, green, and blue to first through fourth grade students. RTs for color incongruent trials were close to 100 msec slower than color congruent trials indicating Stroop interference (d = .96). Therefore, this modified version of the Stroop appears to be an acceptable picture-based measure of automatic processing in elementary age students

The Arabic version of the Stroop Test and its equivalency to the English version

The Stroop test is one of the most popular tests frequently used to assess the function of the frontal lobe in neurological and psychiatric patient populations. Performance on the Stroop test is very sensitive to lesions of the frontal lobes and is commonly used in clinical settings. In 1999, we decided to find out if the Stroop test will be as reliable after translation to the Arabic language as the original English version. We completed the work in Riyadh Military Hospital in 2000. A sample of 10 Saudi adult healthy individuals participated in this study. Their mean age was 31.9 and their mean years of education were 17.3. All subjects performed the Arabic and the English versions of Stroop test. Performance showed no differences between the English and the Arabic versions of the Stroop test. Equivalency data between the two versions of Stroop test are provided. The availability of this data will help us to provide a normative data for the Saudi Committee of Health Education, and in carrying out research on frontal lobe function

Inducing a Stroop Effect

We examine the conditions that lead to Stroop interference for a meaningless linguistic label. Tiffany's cognitive model of drug abuse implies that individuals will respond more slowly to drug-related words compared to neutral words in an emotional Stroop task, because the former have many automatic associations (e.g. positive expectancies). To examine this proposal, we trained participants to associate a meaningless label with either one other word or several other words and examined the induced Stroop interference for these meaningless labels. In two experiments, and contrary to expectations from Tiffany's work, we observed greatest Stroop interference for the meaningless label with just one association. These results are discussed in terms of associative learning theory

Facilitating goal-oriented behaviour in the Stroop task: when executive control is influenced by automatic processing.

A portion of Stroop interference is thought to arise from a failure to maintain goal-oriented behaviour (or goal neglect). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether goal- relevant primes could enhance goal maintenance and reduce the Stroop interference effect. Here it is shown that primes related to the goal of responding quickly in the Stroop task (e.g. fast, quick, hurry) substantially reduced Stroop interference by reducing reaction times to incongruent trials but increasing reaction times to congruent and neutral trials. No effects of the primes were observed on errors. The effects on incongruent, congruent and neutral trials are explained in terms of the influence of the primes on goal maintenance. The results show that goal priming can facilitate goal-oriented behaviour and indicate that automatic processing can modulate executive control

Temporal constraints of the word blindness posthypnotic suggestion on Stroop task performance

The present work investigated possible temporal constraints on the posthypnotic word blindness suggestion effect. In a completely within-subjects and counterbalanced design 19 highly suggestible individuals performed the Stroop task both with and without a posthypnotic suggestion that they would be unable to read the word dimension of the Stroop stimulus, both when response–stimulus interval (RSI) was short (500 ms) or equivalent to previous studies (3500 ms). The suggestion reduced Stroop interference in the short RSI condition (54 vs. 6 ms) but not in the long RSI condition (52 vs. 56 ms), and did not affect Stroop facilitation. Our results suggest that response to the suggestion involves reactive top-down control processes that persist only if levels of activation can be maintained

The Impact of Olfactory Cues on Attention: The Case of Stroop Interference

This study explores the relationship between odor imagery, color associations, and visual attention through a Stroop-task based on common odor-color associations. This Stroop-task was designed using three fruits with odor-color associations: lime with green, strawberry with red, and lemon with yellow. Each possible word-color combination was lexically presented in the experimental trials. Three experiments were conducted that used the Stroop-task with different odors present. They suggest that odor imagery can affect visual attention, the inhibition of odor-color associations, and that odor imagery appears to be facilitated in the presence of a related odor

Improved Self-Control Associated with Using Relatively Large Amounts of Glucose: Learning Self-Control Is Metabolically Expensive

The current study examined whether changes in glucose during a self-control task would predict changes in self-control performance later on. Participants attended two experimental sessions, spaced two weeks apart. During each session, they had their glucose measured, completed the Stroop task as a measure of self-control, and then had their glucose measured again. Larger decreases in glucose (from before to after the Stroop task) during the first session predicted larger increases in improvement on the Stroop task during the second session, in the form of increased speed. Learning self-control might benefit from using larger amounts of glucose. Learning self-control is metabolically expensive. These findings raise the possibility that self-control fatigue occurs because metabolic energy is depleted during the learning of self-control

Task conflict in the Stroop task: When Stroop interference decreases as Stroop facilitation increases in a low task conflict context.

In the present study participants completed two blocks of the Stroop task, one in which the response-stimulus interval (RSI) was 3500 ms and one in which RSI was 200 ms. It was expected that, in line with previous research, the shorter RSI would induce a low Task Conflict context by increasing focus on the color identification goal in the Stroop task and lead to a novel finding of an increase in facilitation and simultaneous decrease in interference. Such a finding would be problematic for models of Stroop effects that predict these indices of performance should be affected in tandem. A crossover interaction is reported supporting these predictions. As predicted, the shorter RSI resulted in incongruent and congruent trial reaction times (RTs) decreasing relative to a static neutral baseline condition; hence interference decreased as facilitation increased. An explanatory model (expanding on the work of Goldfarb and Henik, 2007) is presented that: (1) Shows how under certain conditions the predictions from single mechanism models hold true (i.e., when Task conflict is held constant); (2) Shows how it is possible that interference can be affected by an experimental manipulation that leaves facilitation apparently untouched; and (3) Predicts that facilitation cannot be independently affected by an experimental manipulation