The Influence of Attentional Control on Stimulus Processing is Category Specific in Stroop Tasks : Attentional Control

Overview

Journal Psychol Res

Specialty Psychology

Date 2012 Oct 20

PMID 23080057

Citations 2

Authors

Liwen Zhang

Cody Ding

Hong Li

Qinglin Zhang

Antao Chen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

It is still unclear how attentional control influences stimulus processing. We investigated this issue in four Stroop task experiments utilizing a pretest-training-posttest design. Subjects were given extensive training on the Stroop task using typical incongruent Stroop trials. The rates of color naming and word reading, which reflect the efficiency of stimulus processing, were assessed in pretest and posttest. The difference in rates between posttests and pretests reflects the influence of attentional control, acquired during the training phase, on stimulus processing. In Experiment 1, members of color category were used in the training phase; in Experiment 2, members of color category were used, but not in the training phase; in Experiment 3, they were neither in the color category nor were they used in the training. The results consistently showed that the suppression of word reading and the enhancement of color naming were developed in the training phases and they were not due to general training of color-naming task without conflict but to color-naming training with Stroop conflict (Experiment 4). More importantly, both suppression and enhancement affected the members of color category regardless of whether they were trained or not. The present findings suggest that the influence of attentional control on stimulus processing is category specific. We discuss the implications of the present results in terms of existing research on the locus of attentional control in Stroop tasks.

Citing Articles

Improved emotional conflict control triggered by the processing priority of negative emotion.

Yang Q, Wang X, Yin S, Zhao X, Tan J, Chen A Sci Rep. 2016; 6:24302.

PMID: 27086908 PMC: 4834577. DOI: 10.1038/srep24302.

Training reveals the sources of Stroop and Flanker interference effects.

Chen A, Tang D, Chen X PLoS One. 2013; 8(10):e76580.

PMID: 24146892 PMC: 3795719. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0076580.

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