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25-11-2014 | Original Article

Exploring relations between task conflict and informational conflict in the Stroop task

Auteurs: Olga Entel, Joseph Tzelgov, Yoella Bereby-Meyer, Nitzan Shahar

Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research | Uitgave 6/2015

Abstract

In this study, we tested the proposal that the Stroop task involves two conflicts—task conflict and informational conflict. Task conflict was defined as the latency difference between color words and non-letter neutrals, and manipulated by varying the proportion of color words versus non-letter neutrals. Informational conflict was defined as the latency difference between incongruent and congruent trials and manipulated by varying the congruent-to-incongruent trial ratio. We replicated previous findings showing that increasing the ratio of incongruent-to-congruent trials reduces the latency difference between the incongruent and congruent condition (i.e., informational conflict), as does increasing the proportion of color words (i.e., task conflict). A significant under-additive interaction between the two proportion manipulations (congruent vs. incongruent and color words vs. neutrals) indicated that the effects of task conflict and informational conflict were not additive. By assessing task conflict as the contrast between color words and neutrals, we found that task conflict existed in all of our experimental conditions. Under specific conditions, when task conflict dominated behavior by explaining most of the variability between congruency conditions, we also found negative facilitation, thus demonstrating that this effect is a special case of task conflict.

vorige artikel Learning through instructions vs. learning through practice: flanker congruency effects from instructed and applied S-R mappings

volgende artikel How do you hold your mouse? Tracking the compatibility effect between hand posture and stimulus size

Task conflict = SSC (color words vs. neutrals)/SSB (the variability due to the different congruency conditions). Informational conflict = SSC (congruent vs. incongruent)/SSB (the variability due to the different congruency conditions). Note that these measures are in fact r _alerting ² as defined by Rosenthal, Rosnow and Rubin (2000).

All contrasts were also tested at a significance level of 0.05 by Scheffe's test, F = 9.48.

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Titel: Exploring relations between task conflict and informational conflict in the Stroop task
Auteurs: Olga Entel
Joseph Tzelgov
Yoella Bereby-Meyer
Nitzan Shahar
Publicatiedatum: 25-11-2014
Uitgeverij: Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Gepubliceerd in: Psychological Research / Uitgave 6/2015
Print ISSN: 0340-0727
Elektronisch ISSN: 1430-2772
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-014-0630-0

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