Why do non-color words interfere with color naming?

Abstract

In the non-color-word Stroop task, university students' response latencies were longer for low-frequency than for higher frequency target words. Visual identity primes facilitated color naming in groups reading the prime silently or processing it semantically (Experiment 1) but did not when participants generated a rhyme of the prime (Experiment 3). With auditory identity primes, generating an associate or a rhyme of the prime produced interference (Experiments 2 and 3). Color-naming latencies were longer for nonwords than for words (Experiment 4). There was a small long-term repetition benefit in color naming for low-frequency words that had been presented in the lexical decision task (Experiment 5). Facilitation of word recognition speeds color naming except when phonological activation of the base word increases response competition.

Words’ Origin of an Affective State, but not Valence, Shape the Reaction Latencies in a Word-Sign Choosing Ambiguous Task

“…No valence effect was found for response type or for response latency. This result is in line with other studies using different paradigms showing that when controlling for factors such as arousal or origin of emotionally charged materials, the valence effects disappear (Burt 2002;Imbir and Jarymowicz 2013;Siegle et al 2002;Williams et al 1996). Without care in controlling for those factors, one may compare, for example, negatively valenced and highly arousing stimuli with positively valenced and low arousing ones, and arrive at a mistaken conclusion about the impact of valence.…”

Modulation of word-reading processes in task switching.

“…The kind of suppression that we suggest is measured in our experiments deals with later stages of processing, where phonological codes are constructed (see Burt, 2002, for a similar proposal regarding the modulation of phonological processes in the color Stroop task). Thus, tasks such as word naming and phoneme detection but not necessarily lexical decision are affected.…”

“…Conflict is particularly strong if the word refers to a color, but substantial conflict also occurs even when words do not refer to colors (Burt, 2002;Klein, 1964;Monsell, Taylor, & Murphy, 2001). We assume that to resolve such task competition, some aspect or aspects of the nonselected task must be suppressed, particularly if that task is the more habitual or dominant one.…”

“…In our experiments, words were never the names of colors, nor were they strongly associated with color concepts. Nevertheless, to produce a color-naming response, subjects would have to overcome competition from the potential response to the word carrying the color (Burt, 2002;Klein, 1964; Figure 1. Illustration of events for two trials in neutral and incongruent trial blocks.…”

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

“…As Kinoshita et al also showed, reading the word (and thus having a task conflict) is more likely to occur when the modality of colour response also involves phonology (i.e., vocal responses); as this interference is driven by pronounceability, it increases the more there are letters in the word. In addition, frequency manipulations (e.g., Burt, 2002;Monsell et al, 2001) have shown a (not always reliable) trend, whereby words seen often in the language are colour-named faster than words seen less often. Thus, subtle (uncontrolled) differences in the linguistic make-up of the words could be behind the emotional Stroop.…”