This study examined Stroop-like interference in the fruit Stroop test among 271 5 -12-year-old children and young adults divided into five age groups: 64 5 -6-year-olds, 65 7 -8-year-olds, 60 9 -10-year-olds, 46 11 -12-year-olds, and 36 young adults (18 -23-year-olds). Participants were administered a paper-and-pencil version of the fruit Stroop test, which includes the canonical color task, the superficial color task, and the fruit name task. In these tasks, participants were presented with line-drawings of fruits having strongly associated colors (e.g., yellow banana) and were asked to name the ink colors of the fruits, name the colors the fruit "should be", or read the fruit name. The results indicated robust interference in the canonical color task of the fruit Stroop test, suggesting that this task is useful to assess individual differences of inhibitory control in typical development.

The cancellation task is a visual search task requiring rapid and accurate placement of a mark through each occurrence of a specific target displayed in an array of distractors on a sheet of paper. This study of 30 university students was conducted to examine the effects of visual field constriction on visual search in the cancellation task. Participants administered the orderly array cancellation task and the random array cancellation task while their visual fields were unrestricted (full vision), or restricted to 5˚, 10˚, or 15˚ by tunnel vision simulation goggles. The number of errors, time to completion, and the performance score as an index of cancelling efficiency were calculated. Results showed that the time to completion and the performance score were significantly greater in the random array cancellation task than in the structured array cancellation task, and in the narrowest visual field condition (5˚) than in other visual field conditions (10˚, 15˚, and full vision). These results suggest that the visual search efficiency was degraded when the visual field was restricted to be less than 5˚ in the orderly and random array cancellation tasks used for this study.

People with attention-de cit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are reportedly more prone to injury, especially nonfatal injuries such as sprains and strains of joints and adjacent muscles. However, the reasons underlying the increased incidence of injuries remain unclear. is preliminary study was conducted to elucidate attention mechanisms under circumstances that demand both visual search and walking, and those mechanisms' relation to ADHD tendency in young adults. For this study, 30 young adults performed a walking cancellation task (involving visual search and walking) and a pointing cancellation task (involving visual search). Each task had two conditions manipulated for di culty in terms of the target-to-distractor (TD) ratio. Results showed that (a) cancelling e ciency of the walking cancellation task was lower, (b) cancelling e ciency with a smaller TD ratio was remarkably lower in the walking cancellation task, and (c) ADHD tendency was correlated with cancelling e ciency only in the more di cult condition of the walking cancellation task. ese results suggest that a threshold exists for attention demand, beyond which performance deteriorates extraordinarily when engaging in visual searches while walking.

For two paper-pencil versions of inhibitory tasks that require no reading skill, this study investigated the performance of young adults with no disability. Experiment 1 examined performance on same-different tasks by 42 participants. Three conditions were administered, all of which used geometric shapes: the same (no interference) condition, which asked each participant to check the same items as the target stimuli; the different (interference) condition, which asked to check the different items from the target stimuli while inhibiting the prepotent tendency of checking the same; and the motor condition, which measured motor speed. Results showed the highest performance in the motor condition and the lowest in the different condition. Experiment 2 examined performances of 43 participants on the flanker task, which asked participants to check the same arrow as the target placed in the middle of five arrows in line. Four conditions were administered: the same (no interference) condition, in which all five arrows pointed to the same direction; the different (interference) condition, in which the four arrows flanking the target pointed to the opposite direction against it; the partially different (interference) condition, in which one of the four arrows flanking pointed to the opposite direction; and the motor condition, which measured motor speed. Results showed the highest performance for the motor condition and the lowest for the different and partially different conditions, among which the differences were not significant. These results suggest that the two inhibitory tasks developed in this study are easy to administer and useful for people with little or no reading ability. Results demonstrate that the same-different task might be more inhibitory-demanding than the flanker task. ＜Key-words＞inhibition, same-different task, flanker task, normative data, paper-pencil okuzumi@u-gakugei.ac.jp(Hideyuki OKUZUMI) Asian J Human Services, 2015, 8:13-19.