Abstract
Only one previous developmental study of Stroop task performance (Schiller, 1966) has controlled for differences in processing speed that exist both within and between age groups. Therefore, the question of whether the early developmental change in the magnitude of Stroop interference actually persists after controlling for processing speed needs further investigation; work that is further motivated by the possibility that any remaining differences would be caused by process(es) other than processing speed. Analysis of data from two experiments revealed that, even after controlling for processing speed using z-transformed reaction times, early developmental change persists such that the magnitude of overall Stroop interference is larger in 3rd- and 5th graders as compared to 1st graders. This pattern indicates that the magnitude of overall Stroop interference peaks after 2 or 3years of reading practice (Schadler & Thissen, 1981). Furthermore, this peak is shown to be due to distinct components of Stroop interference (resulting from specific conflicts) progressively falling into place. Experiment 2 revealed that the change in the magnitude of Stroop interference specifically results from joint contributions of task, semantic and response conflicts in 3rd- and 5th graders as compared to a sole contribution of task conflict in 1st graders. The specific developmental trajectories of different conflicts presented in the present work provide unique evidence for multiple loci of Stroop interference in the processing stream (respectively task, semantic and response conflict) as opposed to a single (i.e. response) locus predicted by historically - favored response competition accounts.
Highlights
The Stroop task (Stroop, 1935) requires individuals to identify, as quickly and accurately as possible, the font color of written words without reading them
The extent to which the early developmental change in Stroop interference still occurs when agerelated processing speed differences are accounted for, the same analysis was performed on zRTs
In order to control for differences in processing speed, these were transformed into zRT
Summary
The Stroop task (Stroop, 1935) requires individuals to identify, as quickly and accurately as possible, the font color of written words without reading them Despite this requirement, the typical result is that individuals’ identification times are longer and more error-prone for color-incongruent Stroop words – called Stroop interference (e.g., BLUEgreen–DOG/XXXgreen) – changes during the course of early development (e.g., Aïte, Cassotti, Linzarini, Osmont, Houdé, & Borst, 2018; Grégoire, Perruchet, & Poulin-Charronnat, 2015; Megherbi, Elbro, Oakhill, Segui, & New, 2018; Wright, 2017).
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