The magic of words reconsidered: Investigating the automaticity of reading color-neutral words in the Stroop task.

Abstract

In 2 variants of the color-word Stroop task, we compared 5 types of color-neutral distractors-real words (e.g., HAT), pseudowords (e.g., HIX), consonant strings (e.g., HDK), symbol strings (e.g., #$%), and a row of Xs (e.g., XXX)-as well as incongruent color words (e.g., GREEN displayed in red). When participants named the color, relative to a row of Xs, words and pseudowords interfered equally and more than the consonant strings, which in turn interfered more than the symbols. In contrast, when participants identified the color by manual key-press responses, all 5 types of neutral strings produced equal color response latencies. In both tasks, the incongruent color words produced robust interference relative to the color-neutral words. Reaction time (RT) distribution analyses showed that all interference effects (relative to the row of Xs) increased across the quantiles. We interpret these results in terms of an evidence accumulation process in which the interfering distractor reduces the effective rate of evidence accumulation for the color target. We take the results to argue that the task of reading, even when triggered unintentionally, is not an invariant process driven solely by the stimulus properties, and is instead guided by the task goal. (PsycINFO Database Record

Searching for a word in Chinese text: insights from eye movement behaviour

“…Importantly, as Rayner and Raney (1996) noted, the absence of an influence of word frequency on eye movement behaviour during target word search does not necessarily imply that lexical processing does not occur for non-target words during search for a word in text. For fixated words at least, lexical access may still occur automatically (MacLeod, 1991; but see Kiefer & Martens, 2010;Kinoshita, De Wit, & Norris, 2017) but, as described in the previous paragraph, it may only rarely modulate control of eye movements. It could be that other methods, such as Event Related…”

Response Modality and the Stroop Task

“…responding vocally by saying the colour name aloud) determines the magnitude and type of facilitation and interference that results (Fennell & Ratcliff, 2019;Glaser & Glaser, 1989;Kinoshita, De Wit & Norris, 2017;McClain, 1983;Redding & Gerjets, 1977;Sharma & McKenna, 1998;Turken & Swick, 1999;Zahedi, Abdel Rahman, Stürmer & Sommer, 2019; see also MacLeod, 1991;Parris, Hasshim, Wadsley, Augustinova, & Ferrand, submitted). For example, Sharma and McKenna (1998) reported evidence they argued showed no semantic Stroop effects with the manual response Stroop task (although see Brown & Besner, 2001).…”

“…For example, Sharma and McKenna (1998) reported evidence they argued showed no semantic Stroop effects with the manual response Stroop task (although see Brown & Besner, 2001). Accounts of differences between these two response modes propose differential access to the systems (i.e., phonological, lexico-semantic, or response level processing) that are assumed to produce interference and facilitation (Glaser & Glaser, 1989;Kinoshita, De Wit & Norris, 2017;Sharma & McKenna, 1998;Sugg & McDonald, 1994;Turken and Swick, 1999;Virzi & Egeth, 1985; see also Fennell & Ratcliff, 2019;Zahedi et al, 2019). Consistent with this, it has recently been argued that vocal and manual responding involve different tasks (naming vs classification, respectively) and as such the type of evidence that is accumulated during Phonological processing in the Stroop task 4 Stroop task performance is different, leading to qualitatively different Stroop effects (Kinoshita et al, 2017).…”

“…Recent work has presented evidence suggesting that the manual response Stroop task does not produce phonologically-based Stroop effects (Kinoshita et al, 2017). Kinoshita, De Wit and Norris (2017) asked what aspects of the reading process is triggered by the irrelevant word stimulus to produce interference in the colour-word Stroop task. They compared performance on five types of colour-neutral letter strings to incongruent words.…”

Setting the alarm: Word emotional attributes require consolidation to be operational.

“…Evidence showing that this is clearly a possibility comes from studies looking at unintentional word reading, by means of non-colour word Stroop tasks (for a review, see Kinoshita, De Wit, & Norris, 2017). These studies demonstrate that the extent to which the orthographic make-up of a word (i.e., its sublexical letter sequences) invites reading aloud is a prime determinant of colour classification latencies: these are slower for letter strings that are most prototypical of the language (e.g., Klein, 1964;Monsell, Taylor, & Murphy, 2001).…”