Attention and facilitation: converging information versus inadvertent reading in Stroop task performance

Disagreement exists about whether color-word Stroop facilitation is caused by converging information (e.g., Cohen et al., 1990; Roelofs, 2003) or inadvertent reading (MacLeod & MacDonald, 2000). Four experiments tested between these hypotheses by examining Stroop effects on response time (RT) both within and between languages. Words cannot be read aloud to produce facilitation between languages. Dutch-English bilingual participants named color patches while trying to ignore Dutch or English color words presented at a wide range of preexposure and postexposure stimulus onset asynchronies. The color patches were named in Dutch (Experiments 1 and 2) or English (Experiments 3 and 4). In all experiments, Stroop facilitation and interference effects were obtained in mean RTs with similar time courses within and between languages. Facilitation was generally present throughout the entire RT distributions. These results suggest that Stroop interference and facilitation have a common locus within and between languages, supporting the converging information hypothesis of Stroop facilitation.