Working memory and stroop interference: an individual differences investigation.
We investigated the claim that individual differences in working-memory capacity reflect limitations on the ability to inhibit task-irrelevant information and/or to maintain activation in the face of distracting or interfering events. Specifically, we investigated whether high- and low-capacity individuals differed in their susceptibility to interference on the Stroop task and whether high-capacity individuals employed a strategy for minimizing Stroop interference. In Experiment 1, we found that high-capacity participants showed substantial interference when conflict trials were infrequent, but almost no interference when conflict trials were frequent. In contrast, low-capacity participants showed substantial interference irrespective of the proportion of conflict trials. In Experiment 2, we found that high-capacity participants experienced substantial negative priming, slow responses when the to-be-named color was the irrelevant word on the previous trial. We discuss these results and their implications for high-capacity individuals' ability to reduce Stroop interference in light of both inhibitory and noninhibitory accounts of negative priming.
Long
Debra L
DL
Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis 95616, USA. dllong@ucdavis.edu
Prat
Chantel S
CS
D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D011897:Random Allocation; D011930:Reaction Time