Re-examining age differences in the Stroop effect: The importance of the trees in the forest (plot)

Despite several meta-analyses suggesting that age differences in attentional control are "greatly exaggerated," there have been multiple reports of disproportionate age differences in the Stroop effect. The Stroop task is widely accepted as the gold standard for assessing attentional control and has been critical in comparisons across development and in studies of neuropsychological patient groups. However, accounting for group differences in processing speed is a notorious challenge in interpreting reaction time (RT) data. Within the aging literature, prior meta-analyses have relied on Brinley and State-Trace techniques to account for overall processing speed differences in evaluating the effects of within-participant manipulations. Such analyses are based on mean performance per group per study and have been criticized as potentially being insensitive to within-participant manipulations. In order to further examine possible age differences in Stroop performance, we amassed a dataset from 33 different computerized, color-naming Stroop task studies with available trial-level data from 2,896 participants. We conducted meta-regression analyses on a wide set of dependent measures that control for general slowing, tested for publication bias, and examined four potential methodological moderators. We also conducted linear mixed-effect modeling allowing the intercept to vary randomly for each participant, thereby accounting for individual differences in processing speed. All analyses, with the exception of the Brinley and State-Trace techniques, produced clear evidence supporting a disproportionate age difference in the Stroop effect above and beyond the effects of general slowing. Discussion highlights the importance of trial-level data in accounting for group differences in processing speed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).