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Related Experiment Videos

Adults' versus children's performance on the Stroop task: interference and facilitation.

Barlow C Wright1, Amanda Wanley

  • 1Neurosciences Research Institute, Aston University, Birmingham, UK. b.c.wright@aston.ac.uk

British Journal of Psychology (London, England : 1953)
|December 23, 2003
PubMed
Summary

Children show higher facilitation but not necessarily higher Stroop interference than adults. This suggests age-related differences in cognitive control, impacting how congruent and incongruent stimuli are processed.

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Neuroscience

Background:

  • Stroop tasks assess selective attention and cognitive control by presenting stimuli with congruent, incongruent, or neutral dimensions.
  • Previous research suggests higher 'Stroop interference' in children compared to adults, though definitions vary.
  • Recent debate questions whether 'facilitation effects' are merely the inverse of interference.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To directly compare Stroop interference and facilitation effects between children and adults.
  • To investigate the age-related changes in cognitive control mechanisms underlying Stroop performance.
  • To examine the relationship between facilitation, interference, and potential underlying processes like word-reading and semantic activation.

Main Methods:

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  • A direct comparison of Stroop task performance was conducted between child and adult participants (N = 31).
  • Interference was measured as the difference between incongruent and neutral conditions.
  • The incongruity effect (congruent vs. neutral) and facilitation effect (congruent vs. neutral) were also analyzed.

Main Results:

  • The incongruity effect decreased with age.
  • Stroop interference did not significantly differ between children and adults.
  • Facilitation effects were substantially higher in children than in adults, indicating an opposite asymmetry compared to interference.

Conclusions:

  • Age-related differences in Stroop performance are primarily driven by facilitation, not necessarily interference.
  • The findings challenge the notion that higher interference in children is a universal phenomenon.
  • The observed asymmetry in facilitation and interference supports theories involving word-reading and semantic processing differences across age groups.