Adults' versus children's performance on the Stroop task: Interference and facilitation

Stroop tasks (Stroop, 1935) present stimuli having two dimensions, and participants respond to one dimension whilst ignoring the other. The two dimensions are made congruent, incongruent or neutral with respect to one another. Many claim that ‘Stroop interference’ is higher in children than in adult...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The British journal of psychology 2003-11, Vol.94 (4), p.475-485
Main Authors: Wright, Barlow C., Wanley, Amanda
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Adults
Age differences
Biological and medical sciences
Child
Child Development
Children
Children & youth
Cognition & reasoning
Color
Comparative analysis
Congruity models
Developmental psychology
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Information processing
Interference
Language
Male
Mental Processes
Neutrality
Perceptions
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Stimuli
Stroop Word-Colour task
Task performance
Task Performance and Analysis
Visual Perception
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Summary:Stroop tasks (Stroop, 1935) present stimuli having two dimensions, and participants respond to one dimension whilst ignoring the other. The two dimensions are made congruent, incongruent or neutral with respect to one another. Many claim that ‘Stroop interference’ is higher in children than in adults. However, taking interference as the difference between the incongruent condition and the neutral condition, with interference within the congruent condition itself termed the ‘incongruity effect’ then surprisingly few studies directly address this issue. Also, there is recent debate as to whether the ‘facilitation effect’ (the contrast between the congruent and neutral conditions) is just the opposite of interference. The present investigation (N = 31) concerned a direct comparison between children and adults. Although the incongruity effect reduced with age, interference did not. However, facilitation was far higher in children than in adults. The groups' opposite facilitation/interference asymmetry was used to examine the recent claim that these derive from inadvertent word‐reading and suppression of semantic activation, respectively; rather than solely from the latter.
ISSN:0007-1269
2044-8295
DOI:10.1348/000712603322503042