Stroop dilution is the reduction of the Stroop effect in the presence of a neutral word. It has been attributed to competition for attention between the color word and neutral word, to competition between all stimuli in the visual field, and to perceptual interference. Five experiments tested these accounts. The critical manipulation was whether the color to be named was carried by the color wo...

The Stroop effect refers to an increase in response time observed when the word meaning and the stimulus hue do not match. In an incongruent condition, the word 'green' is presented in the color red, whereas in a congruent condition the word 'red' is presented in the color red. To determine at what level of processing the Stroop effect takes place, we recorded event-related potentials while par...

BACKGROUND This study tested the hypothesis that microstructural white matter abnormalities in frontostriatal-limbic tracts are associated with poor response inhibition on the Stroop task in depressed elders. METHOD Fifty-one elders with major depression participated in a 12-week escitalopram trial. Diffusion tensor imaging was used to determine fractional anisotropy (FA) in white matter regi...

A computerised Stroop colour-naming task was used to measure concerns about weight, shape, and eating in bulimia nervosa. Two versions of the computerised Stroop were compared, a voice-activated and a button-pressing-activated programme. Bulimia nervosa patients were significantly slower in colour naming shape- and weight-related words than their female age-matched controls. The button-pressing...

A portion of Stroop interference is thought to arise from a failure to maintain goal-oriented behaviour (or goal neglect). The aim of the present study was to investigate whether goal- relevant primes could enhance goal maintenance and reduce the Stroop interference effect. Here it is shown that primes related to the goal of responding quickly in the Stroop task (e.g. fast, quick, hurry) substa...

The Stroop Effect is the decreased accuracy and increased response times observed when participants are asked to indicate the printed color of a word that is itself a conflicting or incongruous color-word (respond “blue” to RED printed in blue), compared to color-naming of congruous words or control stimuli (BLUE or XXXX respectively, both printed in blue). Congruous trials (matching word color...

The Stroop Effect is the decreased accuracy and increased response times observed when participants are asked to indicate the printed color of a word that is itself a conflicting or incongruous color-word (respond “blue” to RED printed in blue), compared to color-naming of congruous words or control stimuli (BLUE or XXXX respectively, both printed in blue). Congruous trials (matching word color...

Attentional biases to threat are considered central to anxiety disorders, however physiological evidence of their nature and time course is lacking. Event-related potentials (ERPs) characterized sensory and cognitive changes while 20 outpatients with panic disorder (PD), 20 with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and 20 healthy controls (HCs) responded to the color (emotional Stroop task) or ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether and how stimulus-stimulus (SS) and stimulus-response (SR) consistency and SR congruence effects combine to produce the Stroop effect. Two experiments were conducted with 4-choice tasks in which SS and SR consistency and SR congruence effects were examined in isolation as well as in the Stroop task. The experiments were so designed as to remov...