Abstract
BackgroundTwo-hundred one college undergraduates completed four nonverbal interference tasks (Simon, spatial Stroop, vertical Stroop, and flanker) and trait scales of self-control and impulsivity. Regression analyses tested 11 predictors of the composite interference scores derived from three of the four tasks and each task separately. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationships between laboratory measures of self-control, self-report measures, and the degree to which control might be related to extensive experience in activities that logically require self-control.ResultsFluid intelligence and sex were significant predictors of the composite measure, but bilingualism, music training, video gaming, mindfulness/meditation, self-control, impulsivity, SES, and physical exercise were not.ConclusionsCommon laboratory measures of inhibitory control do not correlate with self-reported measures of self-control or impulsivity and consequently appear to be measuring different constructs. Bilingualism, mindfulness/meditation, playing action video games, and music training or performance provide weak and inconsistent improvements to laboratory measures of interference control. Flanker, Simon, and spatial Stroop effects should not be used or interpreted as measures of domain-general inhibitory control.
Highlights
Two-hundred one college undergraduates completed four nonverbal interference tasks (Simon, spatial Stroop, vertical Stroop, and flanker) and trait scales of self-control and impulsivity
Cognitive psychology has developed elaborate models of cognitive control based on performance in exquisitely controlled laboratory tasks
Public policy and individual choices are influenced by claims that certain types of life experience may enhance “inhibitory control.”
Summary
Two-hundred one college undergraduates completed four nonverbal interference tasks (Simon, spatial Stroop, vertical Stroop, and flanker) and trait scales of self-control and impulsivity. Nonverbal interference tasks (like the four illustrated in Fig. 1) have played a leading role in cognitive psychology. The flanker task was introduced by Eriksen and Eriksen (1974), and their article has been cited more than five thousand times. The attention network test (ANT1), Paap et al Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications was launched in Fan, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz, and Posner (2002) and has been cited nearly three thousand times. (1969) articles that have been cited more than two thousand times. The influential review of the Simon and spatial Stroop task conducted by Lu and Proctor (1994) has nearly a thousand citations. A very conservative search of PsychARTICLES and PsychINFO suggests that more than 4000 articles have not merely cited results from these tasks but have used them
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