What Klein’s “Semantic Gradient” Does and Does Not Really Show: Decomposing Stroop Interference into Task and Informational Conflict Components

Abstract

The present study suggests that the idea that Stroop interference originates from multiple components may gain theoretically from integrating two independent frameworks. The first framework is represented by the well-known notion of “semantic gradient” of interference and the second one is the distinction between two types of conflict – the task and the informational conflict – giving rise to the interference (MacLeod and MacDonald, 2000; Goldfarb and Henik, 2007). The proposed integration led to the conclusion that two (i.e., orthographic and lexical components) of the four theoretically distinct components represent task conflict, and the other two (i.e., indirect and direct informational conflict components) represent informational conflict. The four components were independently estimated in a series of experiments. The results confirmed the contribution of task conflict (estimated by a robust orthographic component) and of informational conflict (estimated by a strong direct informational conflict component) to Stroop interference. However, the performed critical review of the relevant literature (see General Discussion), as well as the results of the experiments reported, showed that the other two components expressing each type of conflict (i.e., the lexical component of task conflict and the indirect informational conflict) were small and unstable. The present analysis refines our knowledge of the origins of Stroop interference by providing evidence that each type of conflict has its major and minor contributions. The implications for cognitive control of an automatic reading process are also discussed.

Further investigation of distinct components of Stroop interference and of their reduction by short response-stimulus intervals

“…The fact that the behavioral manifestation of all three types of conflict can be clearly seen in the Stroop interference observed within the semantic Stroop paradigm administered with vocal responses (Experiment 2) suggests that this paradigm constitutes already a viable avenue of research. At a more general level, it also emphasizes the viability of different multistage accounts and, more specifically, the fact that the two types of multi-stage accounts can easily be integrated in one overarching framework (see e.g., Levin, 2015;Levin & Tzelgov, 2016 for the initial impetus towards this direction).…”

“…It should be noted that these contrasts are not statistically orthogonal (see e.g.,Levin, 2015;Levin & Tzelgov, 2016 for discussions) but these comparisons were performed to address the associated theoretical issue directly.…”

Editorial: The Locus of the Stroop Effect

“…Much of the theory and research however has assumed that the interruption, the locus of the Stroop effect, is at the level of responses (Cohen et al, 1990;Roelofs, 2003), and that it is this type of conflict for which control mechanisms monitor (Botvinick et al, 2001). In line with a recent and burgeoning literature (e.g., Parris, 2014;Levin and Tzelgov, 2016;Augustinova et al, 2018;Entel and Tzelgov, 2018;Kalanthroff et al, 2018;Ferrand et al, 2019;Hasshim et al, 2019;Hershman and Henik, 2019;Parris et al, 2019), the contributions to this Research Topic report findings that indicate that there is more than one locus to the Stroop effect.…”

Is Your Color My Color? Dividing the Labor of the Stroop Task between Co-actors

“…Importantly to the present study, the Stroop effect has been shown to depend on how the irrelevant word names are related to the target colors to which participants respond (Klein, 1964;Levin & Tzelgov, 2016). In particular, Stroop interference is largest when the taskirrelevant word names come from the set of the target colors, but it decreases when the taskirrelevant word names are from outside the set of the target colors.…”