A group of 69 12-year-old children performed three well-known response interference tasks: the Stroop task, the Eriksen flanker task, and the Simon task. Individual differences in accuracy and speed correlated across the tasks. However, there was no correlation between the interference effects on these three tasks. Stroop interference, but not the Simon or flanker effect, was correlated with wo...

Participants learned simple and complex category structures under typical single-task conditions and when performing a simultaneous numerical Stroop task. In the simple categorization tasks, each set of contrasting categories was separated by a unidimensional explicit rule, whereas the complex tasks required integrating information from three stimulus dimensions and resulted in implicit rules t...

Four experiments examined crossmodal versions of the Stroop task in order (1) to look for Stroop asymmetries in color naming, spoken-word naming, and written-word naming and to evaluate the time course of these asymmetries, and (2) to compare these findings to current models of the Stroop effect. Participants named color patches while ignoring spoken color words presented with an onset varying ...

BACKGROUND Aerobic endurance exercise has been shown to improve higher cognitive functions such as executive control in healthy subjects. We tested the hypothesis that a 30-minute individually customized endurance exercise program has the potential to enhance executive functions in patients with major depressive disorder. METHOD In a randomized within-subject study design, 24 patients with DS...

Given the prevalence of traumatic brain injury (TBI), and the fact that many mild TBIs have no external marker of injury, there is a pressing need for innovative assessment technology. The demand for assessment that goes beyond traditional paper-and-pencil testing has resulted in the use of automated cognitive testing for increased precision and efficiency; and the use of virtual environment te...

The ability to make decisions within an emotional context requires a balance between two functionally integrated neural systems that primarily support executive control and affective processing. Several studies have demonstrated effects of emotional interference presented during an ongoing cognitive task, but it is unclear how activating the emotional circuitry prior to a cognitive task may enh...

We used PET (15)O and a modified version of the Stroop task to determine if 25-day abstinent heavy marijuana (MJ) users have persistent deficits in executive cognitive functioning (ECF) and brain activity. Performance on a modified version of the Stroop task and brain activity was compared between 25-day abstinent, heavy marijuana users (n = 11), and a matched comparison group (n = 11). The 25-...

HIGHLIGHTS The conflict monitoring hypothesis signals the need for cognitive controlThe Gratton effect is a key result attributed to the conflict monitoring hypothesisSome argue that controlling binding confounds eliminates the Gratton effect A Gratton effect remains in a vocal Stroop task after eliminating confounds The Gratton effect, the observation that the size of the Stroop effect is larg...

Recently, Derek Besner and his colleagues (Bauer & Besner, 1997; Besner & Stolz, 1999a, 1999b; Besner, Stolz, & Boutilier, 1997; Stolz & Besner, 1999) have reported some experiments that apparently challenge the “automatic” character of word recognition in the Stroop task. The basic underlying idea in their studies is that if the Stroop effect is reduced or even eliminated under certain experim...