Dataset Information

The magic of words reconsidered: Investigating the automaticity of reading color-neutral words in the Stroop task.

ABSTRACT: In 2 variants of the color-word Stroop task, we compared 5 types of color-neutral distractors-real words (e.g., HAT), pseudowords (e.g., HIX), consonant strings (e.g., HDK), symbol strings (e.g., #$%), and a row of Xs (e.g., XXX)-as well as incongruent color words (e.g., GREEN displayed in red). When participants named the color, relative to a row of Xs, words and pseudowords interfered equally and more than the consonant strings, which in turn interfered more than the symbols. In contrast, when participants identified the color by manual key-press responses, all 5 types of neutral strings produced equal color response latencies. In both tasks, the incongruent color words produced robust interference relative to the color-neutral words. Reaction time (RT) distribution analyses showed that all interference effects (relative to the row of Xs) increased across the quantiles. We interpret these results in terms of an evidence accumulation process in which the interfering distractor reduces the effective rate of evidence accumulation for the color target. We take the results to argue that the task of reading, even when triggered unintentionally, is not an invariant process driven solely by the stimulus properties, and is instead guided by the task goal. (PsycINFO Database Record

SUBMITTER: Kinoshita S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6600873 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The magic of words reconsidered: Investigating the automaticity of reading color-neutral words in the Stroop task.

Kinoshita Sachiko S De Wit Bianca B Norris Dennis D

Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition 20160922 3

In 2 variants of the color-word Stroop task, we compared 5 types of color-neutral distractors-real words (e.g., HAT), pseudowords (e.g., HIX), consonant strings (e.g., HDK), symbol strings (e.g., #$%), and a row of Xs (e.g., XXX)-as well as incongruent color words (e.g., GREEN displayed in red). When participants named the color, relative to a row of Xs, words and pseudowords interfered equally and more than the consonant strings, which in turn interfered more than the symbols. In contrast, when ...[more]

PMID: 27656873

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Project description:The well-known Stroop interference effect has been instrumental in revealing the highly automated nature of lexical processing as well as providing new insights to the underlying lexical organization of first and second languages within proficient bilinguals. The present cross-linguistic study had two goals: 1) to examine Stroop interference for dynamic signs and printed words in deaf ASL-English bilinguals who report no reliance on speech or audiological aids; 2) to compare Stroop interference effects in several groups of bilinguals whose two languages range from very distinct to very similar in their shared orthographic patterns: ASL-English bilinguals (very distinct), Chinese-English bilinguals (low similarity), Korean-English bilinguals (moderate similarity), and Spanish-English bilinguals (high similarity). Reaction time and accuracy were measured for the Stroop color naming and word reading tasks, for congruent and incongruent color font conditions. Results confirmed strong Stroop interference for both dynamic ASL stimuli and English printed words in deaf bilinguals, with stronger Stroop interference effects in ASL for deaf bilinguals who scored higher in a direct assessment of ASL proficiency. Comparison of the four groups of bilinguals revealed that the same-script bilinguals (Spanish-English bilinguals) exhibited significantly greater Stroop interference effects for color naming than the other three bilingual groups. The results support three conclusions. First, Stroop interference effects are found for both signed and spoken languages. Second, contrary to some claims in the literature about deaf signers who do not use speech being poor readers, deaf bilinguals' lexical processing of both signs and written words is highly automated. Third, cross-language similarity is a critical factor shaping bilinguals' experience of Stroop interference in their two languages. This study represents the first comparison of both deaf and hearing bilinguals on the Stroop task, offering a critical test of theories about bilingual lexical access and cognitive control.

Project description:The human brain has the capacity to integrate various sources of information and continuously adapts our behavior according to situational needs in order to allow a healthy functioning. Emotion-cognition interactions are a key example for such integrative processing. However, the neuronal correlates investigating the effects of emotion on cognition remain to be explored and replication studies are needed. Previous neuroimaging studies have indicated an involvement of emotion and cognition related brain structures including parietal and prefrontal cortices and limbic brain regions. Here, we employed whole brain event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during an affective number Stroop task and aimed at replicating previous findings using an adaptation of an existing task design in 30 healthy young adults. The Stroop task is an indicator of cognitive control and enables the quantification of interference in relation to variations in cognitive load. By the use of emotional primes (negative/neutral) prior to Stroop task performance, an emotional variation is added as well. Behavioral in-scanner data showed that negative primes delayed and disrupted cognitive processing. Trials with high cognitive demand furthermore negatively influenced cognitive control mechanisms. Neuronally, the emotional primes consistently activated emotion-related brain regions (e.g., amygdala, insula, and prefrontal brain regions) while Stroop task performance lead to activations in cognition networks of the brain (prefrontal cortices, superior temporal lobe, and insula). When assessing the effect of emotion on cognition, increased cognitive demand led to decreases in neural activation in response to emotional stimuli (negative > neutral) within prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and insular cortex. Overall, these results suggest that emotional primes significantly impact cognitive performance and increasing cognitive demand leads to reduced neuronal activation in emotion related brain regions, and therefore support previous findings investigating emotion-cognition interaction in healthy adults. Moreover, emotion and cognition seem to be tightly related to each other, as indicated by shared neural networks involved in both of these processes. Emotion processing, cognitive control, and their interaction are crucial for healthy functioning and a lack thereof is related to psychiatric disorders such as, disruptive behavior disorders. Future studies may investigate the neural characteristics of children and adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders.

Project description:The automaticity of reading is often explored through the Stroop effect, whereby color-naming is affected by color words. Color associates (e.g., "sky") also produce a Stroop effect, suggesting that automatic reading occurs through to the level of semantics, even when reading sub-lexically (e.g., the pseudohomophone "skigh"). However, several previous experiments have confounded congruency with contingency learning, whereby faster responding occurs for more frequent stimuli. Contingency effects reflect a higher frequency-pairing of the word with a font color in the congruent condition than in the incongruent condition due to the limited set of congruent pairings. To determine the extent to which the Stroop effect can be attributed to contingency learning of font colors paired with lexical (word-level) and sub-lexical (phonetically decoded) letter strings, as well as assess facilitation and interference relative to contingency effects, we developed two neutral baselines: each one matched on pair-frequency for congruent and incongruent color words. In Experiments 1 and 3, color words (e.g., "blue") and their pseudohomophones (e.g., "bloo") produced significant facilitation and interference relative to neutral baselines, regardless of whether the onset (i.e., first phoneme) was matched to the color words. Color associates (e.g., "ocean") and their pseudohomophones (e.g., "oshin"), however, showed no significant facilitation or interference relative to onset matched neutral baselines (Experiment 2). When onsets were unmatched, color associate words produced consistent facilitation on RT (e.g., "ocean" vs. "dozen"), but pseudohomophones (e.g., "oshin" vs. "duhzen") failed to produce facilitation or interference. Our findings suggest that the Stroop effects for color and associated stimuli are sensitive to the type of neutral baseline used, as well as stimulus type (word vs. pseudohomophone). In general, contingency learning plays a large role when repeating congruent items more than incongruent items, but appropriate pair-frequency matched neutral baselines allow for the assessment of genuine facilitation and interference. Using such baselines, we found reading processes proceed to a semantic level for familiar words, but not pseudohomophones (i.e., phonetic decoding). Such assessment is critical for separating the effects of genuine congruency from contingency during automatic word reading in the Stroop task, and when used with color associates, isolates the semantic contribution.

Dataset Information

The magic of words reconsidered: Investigating the automaticity of reading color-neutral words in the Stroop task.

Publications

The magic of words reconsidered: Investigating the automaticity of reading color-neutral words in the Stroop task.

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