Developmental differences in the use of task goals in a cued version of the stroop task

The ability of children (M= 8.8 years) and adults (M= 25.6 years) to maintain task goals was examined by comparing their performance on a cued version of the Stroop colour-word task. The experimental task presented a cue on each trial that instructed the participant to either read aloud the forthcoming word or name the colour of the word's lettering. Participants were tested with each of two cue-stimulus delays (1,000 and 5,000 ms). Analysis of error rates in the colour-naming condition revealed that children experienced greater interference than adults at each of the cue-stimulus delays. In an effort to separate the relative contributions of colour-naming and word-reading processes, additional analyses were performed based on the process dissociation procedure of Lindsay and Jacoby (1994). While colour-naming process estimates did not vary with age group or cue-stimulus delay, word-reading process estimates were found to vary with age group and cue-stimulus delay. Specifically, adults were superior to children in the inhibition of irrelevant word information only during a long cue-stimulus delay. Collectively, these findings indicate that children have difficulty maintaining task goals in order to suppress stronger, goal-irrelevant responses.