An Auditory Stroop Test to Implement in Cognitive Hearing Sciences: Development and Normative Data

Area of Science:

• Cognitive psychology
• Auditory neuroscience
• Speech perception

Background:

• Executive functions are crucial for cognitive processing.
• Auditory stimuli can be used to assess cognitive functions.
• Existing cognitive tests often rely on visual stimuli.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate an auditory Stroop test.
• To assess its utility in cognitive hearing sciences.
• To investigate factors influencing performance on the auditory Stroop test.

Main Methods:

• Developed an auditory Stroop test with two components: Stroop-tones and Stroop-words.
• Administered the test to 178 participants aged 18-69.
• Analyzed the influence of age, sex, education, and cognitive abilities on test performance.

Main Results:

• Auditory Stroop performance was significantly predicted by verbal working memory and processing speed.
• A trend of decreasing performance with increasing age was observed.
• Other demographic and cognitive variables did not show significant relationships.

Conclusions:

• The auditory Stroop test is a viable tool for measuring executive functioning with auditory stimuli.
• This test can enhance the understanding of the auditory-cognitive aspects of speech processing.
• It holds promise for applications within cognitive hearing sciences.