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Adults' versus children's performance on the Stroop task: Interference and facilitation
Author(s) -
Wright Barlow C.,
Wanley Amanda
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1348/000712603322503042
Subject(s) - stroop effect , facilitation , psychology , interference (communication) , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , contrast (vision) , reading (process) , task (project management) , audiology , cognition , neuroscience , linguistics , medicine , channel (broadcasting) , philosophy , management , artificial intelligence , computer science , electrical engineering , economics , engineering
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.