Does Posture Influence the Stroop Effect?

Abstract

Rosenbaum, Mama, and Algom (2017) reported that participants who completed the Stroop task (i.e., name the hue of a color word when the hue and word meaning are congruent or incongruent) showed a smaller Stroop effect (i.e., the difference in response times between congruent and incongruent trials) when they performed the task standing than when sitting. We report five attempted replications (analyzed sample sizes: N = 108, N = 108, N = 98, N = 78, and N = 51, respectively) of Rosenbaum et al.’s findings, which were conducted in two institutions. All experiments yielded the standard Stroop effect, but we failed to detect any consistent effect of posture (sitting vs. standing) on the magnitude of the Stroop effect. Taken together, the results suggest that posture does not influence the magnitude of the Stroop effect to the extent that was previously suggested.

The Influence of Posture on Attention

“…Results from our experiments revealed that, in contrast to Smith et al, the postural interactions were quite limited in magnitude in addition to being only a fraction of the size of the original effects. Moreover, our results from Experiment 1 are consistent with two recent replications (Caron et al, 2020;Straub et al, 2022) which reported no meaningful influences of posture on the Stroop effect. In all, the current research provides further converging evidence that postural influences on cognition do not appear to be as robust as was initially reported in prior work.…”

“…Unfortunately, the Smith et al (2019) replication of Rosenbaum et al's (2017Rosenbaum et al's ( /2018 findings could not be replicated either (Experiment 2 in Straub et al, 2022). When Straub et al (2022) meta-analyzed effect sizes for 10 posture and Stroop effect experiments (Caron et al, 2020;Rosenbaum et al, 2017Rosenbaum et al, /2018Smith et al, 2019;Straub et al, 2022), they found a small overall effect size with a confidence interval crossing below the null (Cohen's d = 0.06, 95% CI [-0.04, 0.16]). The combination of these results raises questions about the relationship between posture and Stroop performance.…”

“…Since the introduction of "standing desks", otherwise known as active workstations (Torbeyns et al, 2014;MacEwen et al, 2015), there has been ongoing debate regarding whether standing can positively influence an individual's cognitive performance relative to sitting (Caron et al, 2020;Rosenbaum et al, 2017Rosenbaum et al, /2018Smith et al, 2019;Straub et al, 2022). Recent work on this topic finds its roots in the theoretical framework of embodied cognition, which maintains that cognitive processes are best understood in terms of contextualized interactions among the body, brain, and environment (Matheson & Barsalou, 2018).…”

“…These findings led to a series of conceptual and direct replications with mixed results (e.g., Caron et al, 2020;Smith et al, 2019;and Straub et al, 2022). One group of researchers reported a successful replication demonstrating a large significant effect (Experiment 1 in Smith et al, 2019), while a series of multiple experiments conducted by others failed to find any meaningful effects (Experiments 1-5 in Caron et al, 2020;Experiment 1 in Straub et al, 2022).…”

Body Mobility and Attention Networks in 6- to 7-Year-Old Children

“…Therefore, changing posture during lessons may improve children attention. In adults, an increase in alertness ( Caldwell et al, 2003 ; Barra et al, 2015 ) and to a lesser extent in executive control performance ( Rosenbaum et al, 2017 ; Smith et al, 2019 , but see Caron et al, 2020 ; Kang et al, 2021 ) were observed by adopting a standing compared to a sitting posture. These improvements may derive from neurophysiological modulations occurring when standing ( Tulen et al, 1999 ; Hennig et al, 2000 ; Caldwell et al, 2003 ; Thibault and Raz, 2016 ) which may increase the level of general and cortical arousal ( Barra et al, 2015 ; Smith et al, 2019 ).…”