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Background: The Stroop task was used to investigate differences in cognitive function between Long COVID (LC), Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and healthy control subjects., Methods: Subjects viewed four color words or neutral (XXXX) stimuli with the same (congruent) or different color ink (incongruent). Cognitive conflict was inferred from response times for pairings of prestimuli and subsequent stimuli. Overall effects were assessed by univariate analysis with time courses determined for binned response times., Results: LC and ME/CFS had significantly longer response times than controls indicating cognitive dysfunction. Initial response times were ranked LC > ME > HC, and decreased according to power functions. At the end of the task (900s), times were ranked LC = ME > HC. Response times were significantly slower for stimuli following an incongruent prestimulus. Time series for Stroop effect, facilitation, interference, surprise index and practice power law parameters were generally similar in LC, ME/CFS and HC suggesting comparable patterns for recruitment of cognitive resources. The prestimulus data were analyzed and generated positive Stroop and interference effects that were distinct from stimulus effects., Conclusion: LC and ME/CFS have global slowing of response times that cannot be overcome by practice suggesting impaired communications between network nodes during problem solving. Analysis of matched prestimulus - stimulus effects adds a new dimension for understanding cognitive conflict., Brief Summary: Cognitive dysfunction in Long COVID and ME/CFS was demonstrated using the Stroop task which found global slowing of response times and limitations of practice effects., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Introduction: Cognitive control is a prerequisite for successful, goal-oriented behavior. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is assumed to be a key player in applying cognitive control; however, the neural mechanisms by which this process is accomplished are still unclear., Methods: To further address this question, an audiovisual Stroop task was used, comprising simultaneously presented pictures and spoken names of actors and politicians. Depending on the task block, participants had to indicate whether they saw the face or heard the name of a politician or an actor (visual vs. auditory blocks). In congruent trials, both stimuli (visual and auditory) belonged to the same response category (actor or politician); in incongruent trials, they belonged to different categories. During this task, activity in sensory target regions was measured via functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and electroencephalography (EEG), respectively. Specifically, fNIRS was used to monitor activity levels within the auditory cortex, while the EEG-based event-related potential of the N170 was considered as a marker of FFA (fusiform face area) involvement. Additionally, we assessed the effects of inhibitory theta-burst stimulation-a specific protocol based on repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS)-over the right DLPFC. Non-invasive brain stimulation is one of the few means to draw causal conclusions in human neuroscience. In this case, rTMS was used to temporarily inhibit the right DLPFC as a presumed key player in solving Stroop conflicts in one of two measurement sessions; then, effects were examined on behavioral measures as well as neurophysiological signals reflecting task-related activity in the frontal lobes and sensory cortices., Results: The results indicate a central role of the DLPFC in the implementation of cognitive control in terms of a suppression of distracting sensory input in both the auditory cortex and visual system (FFA) in high-conflict situations. Behavioral data confirm a reduced Stroop effect following previous incongruent trials ("Gratton effect") that was only accomplished with an intact DLPFC (i.e., following placebo stimulation)., Discussion: Because non-invasive brain stimulation is uniquely suited to causally test neuroscientific hypotheses in humans, these data give important insights into some of the mechanisms by which the DLPFC establishes conflict resolution across different sensory modalities., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Ehlis, Zarantonello, Haeussinger, Rohe, Rosenbaum, Fallgatter and Maier.)

The numerical Stroop task involves presenting participants with two digits that differ in physical size and numerical value and asking them to report which digit had the larger size or value while ignoring the other dimension. Previous studies show that participants have difficulty ignoring the irrelevant dimension and thus have implications on the automaticity of numerical processing. The present study investigates the automatic influence of numerical value on numerosity processing in a novel Stroop-like task. In two experiments, participants were presented with digits made of colored stripes and asked to identify the number of different colors. In both experiments, interference and facilitation effects were found, supporting the automaticity of symbolic number processing and its influence on numerosity processing. These findings expand upon previous research on numerical as well as counting Stroop tasks, and have potential implications for studying interference and basic numerical processing in children and clinical populations., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The experiment combined the spatial Stroop paradigm to examine the effect of background location on the perception of arrow or gaze direction in the vertical dimension by manipulating the congruence between the target direction and background location, and to validate a possible cognitive mechanism for gaze direction specificity - inhibiting background location. The results showed that when subjects were required to identify the target direction in a Stroop task (Experiment 1), the gaze cue failed to induce the Stroop effect. However, when subjects were required to judge the congruence between the target direction and the background location (Experiment 2), the gaze cue and the arrow cue both induced the Stroop effect. This suggests that " inhibiting background location" is responsible for the elimination of the spatial Stroop effect by gaze direction, which may one of the mechanisms for gaze direction specificity., Competing Interests: The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2024.)

The study addressed the still-open issue of whether semantic (in addition to response) conflict does indeed contribute to Stroop interference (which along with facilitation contributes to the overall Stroop effect also known as Congruency effect). To this end, semantic conflict was examined across the entire response time (RT) distribution (as opposed to mean RTs). Three (out of four) reported experiments, along with cross-experimental analyses, revealed that semantic conflict was absent in the participants' faster responses. This result characterizes Stroop interference as a unitary phenomenon (i.e., driven uniquely by response conflict). When the same participants' responses were slower, Stroop interference became a composite phenomenon with an additional contribution of semantic conflict that was statistically independent of both response conflict and facilitation. While the present findings allow us to account for the fact that semantic conflict has not been consistently found in past studies, further empirical and theoretical efforts are still needed to explain why exactly it is restricted to longer responses. Indeed, since neither unitary nor composite models can account for this polymorphic nature of Stroop interference on their own, the implications for the current state of theory are outlined., (© 2024. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

In the present study, we conducted a Stroop-like task in which the participants were required to decide whether the presented stimulus, which could be either a colored digit or a colored rectangle, consisted of more or less than five colors. Like other Stroop-like tasks, the stimuli could be congruent (the stimulus was a digit that was equal to the presented number of colors), incongruent (the stimulus was a digit that was different than the presented number of colors), or neutral (a colored rectangle). We utilized a two-to-one response setting so that in some incongruent trials the digit and the number of colors would elicit the same response (e.g., the digit 3 containing two colors; both are smaller than 5), while in some incongruent trials, the digit and the number of colors would elicit different responses (e.g., the digit 3 containing 6 colors). This enabled us to measure both conflicts arising from stimulus-stimulus and stimulus-response compatibilities. Our results indicated the existence of stimulus-stimulus compatibility (SSC), stimulus-response compatibility (SRC), and task conflict. Interestingly, these effects were in interaction with the number of colors, so that in small numbers, SSC and SRC were found, and in large numbers, SRC and task conflict were found. Moreover, the results suggest that our task includes two types of task conflict that are raised due to three different tasks: processing the meaning of the digit vs. estimating the number of colors and counting the number of colors vs. estimating the number of colors., Competing Interests: The authors have no competing interests to declare., (Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s).)

Purpose: Despite the high prevalence of anxiety disorders in BD and its known impact on cognitive performance, the presence and severity of anxious symptoms is not systematically evaluated in studies on cognition in BD. Our aim was to determine if attention and/or inhibition of cognitive interference in euthymic patients with type I Bipolar Disorder (BD-I) is affected by symptoms of anxiety., Patients and Methods: Eighty-seven euthymic BD-I patients were included. Patients with comorbidities other than Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) or Panic Disorder (PD) were excluded. State anxiety was measured with the Brief Inventory of Anxious Responses and Situations (ISRA-B). Subjective cognitive performance was evaluated with the COBRA scale, attention with the Digit-Span Forward task and inhibition of cognitive interference was assessed with the StroopTest interference score. Multiple linear regression models were used to test if anxious symptoms were associated with attention or inhibition of cognitive interference, considering other known contributors for cognitive impairment., Results: Attention was unaffected by anxiety symptoms, but the overall regression for inhibition of cognitive interference was significant: years of schooling (β=1.12, p = 0.001), cognitive complaints (β=0.44, p = 0.008), and anxiety (β=-0.21, p = 0.017) explained 15% of the interference score of the Stroop test (R2 = 0.15)., Conclusion: Beyond residual affective symptoms, anxious symptoms seem to affect inhibition of cognitive interference. We recommend routine testing of anxiety when considering cognitive evaluations, especially when screening for cognitive deficits., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work., (© 2024 Yoldi-Negrete et al.)

The ability to inhibit conflicting information is pivotal in the dynamic and high-speed context of fast-ball sports. However, the behavioral and electrophysiological characteristics underlying the cognitive inhibition processes associated with table tennis expertise remain unexplored. This study aims to bridge these research gaps by utilizing the color-word Stroop task and the spatial Stroop task alongside event-related potential (ERP) measurements to investigate domain-general and domain-specific cognitive inhibition among table tennis athletes. The study involved a total of 40 participants, including 20 table tennis athletes (11 males and 9 females; mean age 20.75 years) and 20 nonathletes (9 males and 11 females; mean age 19.80 years). The group differences in the Stroop effect on behavioral outcomes and ERP amplitudes were compared within each task, respectively. In the color-word Stroop tasks, athletes exhibited smaller incongruent-related negative potential amplitudes (N inc ; 300-400 ms; p = 0.036) and a diminished Stroop effect on late sustained potential amplitudes (LSP; 500-650 ms; p = 0.028) than nonathletes, although no significant differences were observed in behavioral outcomes ( p > 0.05). Conversely, in the spatial Stroop tasks, athletes not only responded more swiftly but also exhibited reduced Stroop effects on both LSP amplitudes (350-500 ms; p = 0.004) and reaction times ( p = 0.002) relative to nonathletes. These findings suggest that table tennis athletes excel in cognitive inhibition in the context of both domain-general and domain-specific tasks, particularly exhibiting enhanced performance in tasks that are closely aligned with the demands of their sport. Our results support the neural efficiency hypothesis and improve our understanding of the interactions between cognitive functions and table tennis expertise.

The paper endorses Cognitive Load Theory and offers insights into the characterization of the mechanisms underlying extraneous cognitive load and their impact on basic learning. Students were asked to learn associations between eight base-code words and eight digits, based on an example, and to rapidly apply their new knowledge in a test section. Two groups of 60 university students participated in two experiments. The study was implemented as two distinct experiments, one using color names (e.g., blue, yellow) and the other using color-related word concepts (e.g., sky, banana) for stimulation. Each experiment had two conditions that manipulated the location and salience of task-irrelevant color information (extraneous cognitive load) and its congruity with the digits' corresponding base-code words. Findings indicated extraneous cognitive load has the potential to both sustain and undermine learning processes by varying the overall cognitive load, with gains and costs in learning efficiency resulting from essentially different processing scenarios., Competing Interests: The authors have no competing interests to declare., (Copyright: © 2024 The Author(s).)

Objective: As images are used within graphical user interfaces to signify menu selection, it is important to understand how image properties can influence cursor placement online., Background: Objects have multiple dimensions that create potential ambiguity and Stroop-like confusions for the operator if a previously habitual response conflicts with the required response., Methods: To examine the impact of compatibility and other contextual factors, 41 participants used a computer Mouse or touch screen to place the cursor upon images of full or empty cups that varied in size, and direction of handle., Results: Cursor placements took longer using the Mouse than touch screen. Although participants were placing the cursor on images, the size of the cup, whether it was empty or full, and the handle orientation interacted in their effects upon response duration and cursor placement. The effects of cup size reversed for empty cups or those with incompatible handles., Conclusion: Context can influence cursor placement. Perceived spillability influenced precision requirements, and the cup handle can serve as target or a flanking distractor., Application: Image content can influence screen hotspots. As performance can change with cup spillability, this bodes well for attempts to detect intent from cursor trajectories.

In the standard colour-word Stroop task, participants are presented with colour words and required to respond to their colour while ignoring their meaning. Two types of conflict might occur in such experiments: information conflict and task conflict. Information conflict reflects the processing of two contradicting pieces of information and is indicated by shorter reaction times (RTs) in congruent than in incongruent trials. Task conflict reflects the additional effort associated with performing two tasks, as opposed to one, and is indicated by shorter RTs in neutral trials than in congruent trials (termed reverse facilitation). While information conflict is commonly seen in Stroop and Stroop-like tasks, task conflict is rarely observed. In the present study, participants were presented with coloured segments that, by applying Gestalt principles, could be perceived as colour words. We found that incongruent trials were slower than congruent trials, suggesting that participants successfully perceived the colour words, which led to involuntary reading. In addition, reversed facilitation was found so that neutral trials (i.e., trials that only consist of one task) were faster than congruent trials (as well as incongruent trials; both consist of two tasks). The presence of both interference from the incongruent trials and reverse facilitation suggests that involuntary reading could also occur in scenarios requiring cognitive effort., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

In the typical Stroop task, participants are presented with color words written in different ink colors and are asked to respond to their color. It has been suggested that the Stroop task consists of two main conflicts: information conflict (color vs. word naming) and task conflict (respond to color vs. read the word). In the current study, we developed a novel task that includes both Response trials (i.e., trials in which a response is required) and Rest trials (i.e., trials in which no response is required or available) and investigated the existence of both information and task conflicts in Rest trials. We found evidence for task conflict in Response and also in Rest trials, while evidence for information conflict was only observed in Response trials. These results are in line with a model of task conflict that occurs independently of and prior to information conflict in the Stroop task., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder known for its significant heterogeneity and varied symptom presentation. Describing the different subtypes as predominantly inattentive (ADHD-I), combined (ADHD-C), and hyperactive-impulsive (ADHD-H) relies primarily on clinical observations, which can be subjective. To address the need for more objective diagnostic methods, this pilot study implemented a Microsoft Kinect-based Stroop Color-Word Test (KSWCT) with the objective of investigating the potential differences in executive function and motor control between different subtypes in a group of children and adolescents with ADHD. A series of linear mixture modeling were used to encompass the performance accuracy, reaction times, and extraneous movements during the tests. Our findings suggested that age plays a critical role, and older subjects showed improvements in KSWCT performance; however, no significant divergence in activity level between the subtypes (ADHD-I and ADHD-H/C) was established. Patients with ADHD-H/C showed tendencies toward deficits in motor planning and executive control, exhibited by shorter reaction times for incorrect responses and more difficulty suppressing erroneous responses. This study provides preliminary evidence of unique executive characteristics among ADHD subtypes, advances our understanding of the heterogeneity of the disorder, and lays the foundation for the development of refined and objective diagnostic tools for ADHD.

In stimulant use and addiction, conflict control processes are crucial for regulating substance use and sustaining abstinence, which can be particularly challenging in social-affective situations. Users of methamphetamine (METH, "Ice") and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, "Ecstasy") both experience impulse control deficits, but display different social-affective and addictive profiles. We thus aimed to compare the effects of chronic use of the substituted amphetamines METH and MDMA on conflict control processes in different social-affective contexts (i.e., anger and happiness) and investigate their underlying neurophysiological mechanisms. For this purpose, chronic but recently abstinent users of METH (n = 38) and MDMA (n = 42), as well as amphetamine-naïve healthy controls (n = 83) performed an emotional face-word Stroop paradigm, while event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded. Instead of substance-specific differences, both MDMA and METH users showed smaller behavioral effects of cognitive-emotional conflict processing (independently of emotional valence) and selective deficits in emotional processing of anger content. Both effects were underpinned by stronger P3 ERP modulations suggesting that users of substituted amphetamines employ altered stimulus-response mapping and decision-making. Given that these processes are modulated by noradrenaline and that both MDMA and METH use may be associated with noradrenergic dysfunctions, the noradrenaline system may underlie the observed substance-related similarities. Better understanding the functional relevance of this currently still under-researched neurotransmitter and its functional changes in chronic users of substituted amphetamines is thus an important avenue for future research., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The classic Stroop task is very simple: you have to name the color of words printed on a page. If these words are color words (like "red" or "blue"), where the color named and the color it is printed in are different (say, "red" printed in blue), the reaction time increases significantly. My aim is to argue that the existing psychological explanations of the Stroop effect need to be supplemented. The Stroop effect is not exclusively about access to motor control. It is also, to a large extent, about interferences in perceptual processing. To put it briefly, reading the color word triggers-laterally and automatically-visual imagery of the color and this interferes with the processing of the perceived color of the word. In other words, the Stroop effect is to a large extent a sensory phenomenon, and it has less to do with attention, conflict monitoring, or other higher-level phenomena., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The label 'Stop' potentially generates conflict-signifying important corrective action, or a warning not to touch. To examine potential conflict between an incongruent label (i.e. STOP) and an imperative command (i.e. MOVE!), 18 participants used a computer mouse to move a crosshair cursor to targets with superimposed labels. Trials systematically varied Imperative (blank or MOVE!), Label (+GO + or STOP) and movement Distance. Kinematic analyses examined response latency, movement duration and accuracy. Incongruent labels had little impact upon response latencies, but they affected cursor deceleration and the variability of cursor placement. Although reading is assumed to be obligatory, the impact of written labels is not immediate, instead affecting cursor deceleration. Indeed, responses to controls labelled STOP were less accurate than those labelled + GO+. As labelled interfaces can create error versus command confusions, enhancing the discriminability of controls to afford more obvious visible cues as to method of use is recommended. Practitioner summary: Emergency stop and shutdown controls can cause response conflict as their labels signify both urgent corrective actions and 'don't touch'. Response conflict caused by confusing superimposed labels is resolved as cursors near the target control and may result in reduced movement accuracy. Prior warnings may influence resolution of response conflict. Abbreviations : Hz: Hertz; M: Mean; ms: millisecond; mm: millimetre; S: second; SD: Standard Deviation; SE: Standard Error; USB: Universal Serial Bus.

People occasionally associate color (e.g., hue) with sound (e.g., pitch). Previous studies have reported color-sound associations, which are examples of crossmodal correspondences. However, the association between both semantic and perceptual factors with color/sound discrimination in crossmodal correspondence remains unclear. To clarify this, three psychological experiments were conducted, where Stroop tasks were used to assess automatic process on the association. We focused on the crossmodal correspondence between color (Experiment 1)/color word (Experiment 2) and sound. Participants discriminated the color/word or the sound presented simultaneously. The results showed the color-sound bidirectional enhancement/interference of the response by certain associations of the crossmodal correspondence (blue-drop and yellow-shiny) in both experiments. These results suggest that these Stroop effects were caused by the semantic factor (color category) and the perceptual factor (color appearance) was not necessary for the current results. In Experiment 3, response modulation by color labeling was investigated to clarify the influence of subjective labeling. Participants labeled a presented ambiguous color, which was a hue specification between two specific colors, by listening to the sound. The results revealed that the Stroop effect was caused only when the presented color was classified as the color related to the presented sound. This showed that subjective labeling played a role in the regulation of the effect of crossmodal correspondences. These findings should contribute to the explanation of crossmodal correspondences through semantic mediation., Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© The Author(s) 2023.)

For unconscious perception research, Bayesian statistics are more appropriate for assessing null awareness of masked stimuli than traditional (frequentist) statistics. This assertion is based mostly upon the theoretical features of Bayesian statistics and modeling studies. To further assess the potential advantages, we compared frequentist and Bayesian statistical tests in a masked Stroop priming experiment in which the prime stimuli were presented at varying degrees of visibility. A novel contribution was to compare a null awareness dissociation approach (i.e., stimulus awareness = 0) to a relative sensitivity approach (indirect or priming effects > direct effects) for the same data. From a null awareness perspective, the frequentist t -tests for the Stroop effect (i.e., perception) for the briefest display conditions had non-significant outcomes. Similar Bayesian t -tests were inconclusive. In contrast, the relative sensitivity dissociation approach was more interpretable, with strong evidence against unconscious perception from a single Bayesian t test. For the longer display conditions, both statistical approaches suggested large conscious perception effects. We conclude that the utility of Bayesian statistics is highly dependent upon the type of dissociation approach, with a relative sensitivity approach being more straightforward to interpret than a null awareness approach.

Facial expressions carry important social signals that must be precisely regulated despite potentially conflicting demands on veridicality, communicative intent, and the social situation. In a sample of 19 participants we investigated the challenges of deliberately controlling two facial expressions (smiles and frowns) by the emotional congruency with the expressions of adult and infant counterparts. In a Stroop-like task requiring participants' deliberate expressions of anger or happiness, we investigated the impact of task-irrelevant background pictures of adults and infants showing negative, neutral, or positive facial expressions. Participants' deliberate expressions were measured with electromyogram (EMG) of the M. zygomaticus major and M. corrugator supercilii. The latencies of EMG onsets revealed similar congruency effects for smiles and frowns with significant facilitation and inhibition components relative to the neutral condition. Interestingly, the facilitation effect for frown responses by negative facial expressions was significantly smaller vis a vis infant as compared to adult background faces. This diminished facilitation of frowns by infant's expressions of distress may relate to the activation of caregiver behavior or empathy. We investigated the neural correlates of the observed performance effects by recording event-related-potentials (ERPs). Increased amplitudes in ERP components were observed in incongruent relative to neutral conditions, revealing interference effects on both types of deliberate facial expressions, at different processing stages, namely, structural facial encoding (N170), conflict monitoring (N2), to semantic analysis (N400)., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest There was no conflict of interest while conducting this study., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

In the Stroop task, the identities of the targets (e.g., colours) and distractors (e.g., words) used are often correlated. For example, in a list in which 4 words and 4 colours are combined to form 16 stimuli, each of the 4 congruent stimuli is typically repeated 3 times as often as each of the 12 incongruent stimuli. Some accounts of the Stroop effect suggest that in this type of list, often considered as a baseline because of the matching proportion of congruent and incongruent stimuli (50%), the word dimension actually receives more attention than it does in an uncorrelated list in which words and colours are randomly paired. This increased attention would be an important determinant of the Stroop effect in correlated situations, an idea supported by the observation that higher target-distractor correlation lists are associated with larger Stroop effects. However, because target-distractor correlation tends to be confounded with congruency proportion in common designs, the latter may be the crucial factor, consistent with accounts that propose that attention is adapted to the list's congruency proportion. In four experiments, we examined the idea that target-distractor correlation plays a major role in colour-word Stroop experiments by contrasting an uncorrelated list with a correlated list matched on relevant variables (e.g., congruency proportion). Both null hypothesis significance testing and Bayesian analyses suggested equivalent Stroop effects in the two lists, challenging accounts based on the idea that target-distractor correlations affect how attention is allocated in the colour-word Stroop task.

This paper aims to integrate some key constructs in the cognitive neuroscience of cognitive control and executive function by formalising the notion of cognitive (or mental) effort in terms of active inference. To do so, we call upon a task used in neuropsychology to assess impulse inhibition-a Stroop task. In this task, participants must suppress the impulse to read a colour word and instead report the colour of the text of the word. The Stroop task is characteristically effortful, and we unpack a theory of mental effort in which, to perform this task accurately, participants must overcome prior beliefs about how they would normally act. However, our interest here is not in overt action, but in covert (mental) action. Mental actions change our beliefs but have no (direct) effect on the outside world-much like deploying covert attention. This account of effort as mental action lets us generate multimodal (choice, reaction time, and electrophysiological) data of the sort we might expect from a human participant engaging in this task. We analyse how parameters determining cognitive effort influence simulated responses and demonstrate that-when provided only with performance data-these parameters can be recovered, provided they are within a certain range., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Background: Covert hepatic encephalopathy (CHE) adversely affects the clinical outcomes of patients with cirrhosis but remains largely undiagnosed and untreated. Although the Stroop test is a useful method for CHE detection, a faster, simpler, and more accurate test is required to diagnose CHE. This prospective study aimed to develop a new shortened Stroop test that can detect CHE and predict overt hepatic encephalopathy (OHE) in Japanese patients with cirrhosis., Methods: Patients who underwent neuropsychological tests (NPT) and the Stroop test between November 2018 and December 2021 were enrolled and followed until OHE occurrence or March 2022. The discriminative ability of various run combinations in the off and on states to detect CHE was evaluated using the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUC) and compared with that of the total Stroop test time., Results: Among the 227 eligible patients, the On1-2Time cutoff value of 44.4 s had a comparable discriminative ability with the total Stroop test time to detect CHE, with an AUC of 0.791, a sensitivity of 0.827, and a specificity of 0.685. During a median follow-up period of 16 months, 37 patients developed OHE. On1-2Time ≥ 44.4 s (hazard ratio [HR], 3.93; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.36-11.36) and serum albumin levels (HR, 0.28; 95% CI 0.11-0.67) were independently associated with OHE occurrence., Conclusions: The shortened Stroop test (On1-2Time) is equivalent to the total Stroop test not only for identifying CHE but also for estimating the risk of progression to OHE., (© 2022. Japanese Society of Gastroenterology.)

Addressing fatigue is useful in a variety of scenarios and activities. Fatigue has recently been studied from a psychophysiological standpoint. As a result, the expression and impact of peripheral and central fatigue has been evaluated. Driving is one occupation where tiredness has disastrous consequences. BAlert is a smartphone app that approaches exhaustion with psychophysiological measures. More specifically, it evaluates the level of fatigue via heart rate variability (HRV) data and the cognitive compromise via Stroop effect. The goal of this study is to determine if there are gender differences in fatigue levels among professional drivers using the BAlert app. Statistically significant differences were found in the number of hours awake, in different parameters of HRV (AVNN, PNN50, RMSSD, and SDNN), in the level of stress, as well as in the cognitive response evaluated through the app. The results are discussed and their implications for the management of work fatigue are presented., Competing Interests: HA and CJ were employed by AlertPlus S.A. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 De La Vega, Anabalon, Tannion, Purto and Jara D.)

Background: Previous work showed that elderly with excess in theta activity in their resting state electroencephalogram (EEG) are at higher risk of cognitive decline than those with a normal EEG. By using event-related potentials (ERP) during a counting Stroop task, our prior work showed that elderly with theta excess have a large P300 component compared with normal EEG group. This increased activity could be related to a higher EEG signal energy used during this task., New Method: By wavelet analysis applied to ERP obtained during a counting Stroop task we quantified the energy in the different frequency bands of a group of elderly with altered EEG., Results: In theta and alpha bands, the total energy was higher in elderly subjects with theta excess, specifically in the stimulus categorization window (258-516 ms). Both groups solved the task with similar efficiency., Comparison With Existing Methods: The traditional ERP analysis in elderly compares voltage among conditions and groups for a given time window, while the frequency composition is not usually examined. We complemented our previous ERP analysis using a wavelet methodology. Furthermore, we showed the advantages of wavelet analysis over Short Time Fourier Transform when exploring EEG signal during this task., Conclusions: The higher EEG signal energy in ERP might reflect undergoing neurobiological mechanisms that allow the elderly with theta excess to cope with the cognitive task with similar behavioral results as the normal EEG group. This increased energy could promote a metabolic and cellular dysregulation causing a greater decline in cognitive function., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The working memory Stroop task is to name the color of a rectangular patch with keypress while holding a color word in working memory. Previous studies using this variant of the Stroop task have shown that congruency between the color patch and the color word significantly affects both color naming and working memory, with the worsening of task performance when the color patch is semantically incongruent rather than congruent with the color word. However, it remains unclear with regard to cognitive mechanisms underlying such congruency effects in the working memory Stroop task. By including a control condition among the congruent and incongruent conditions in a working memory Stroop task, the present study showed that nearly all of the working memory Stroop effect can be facilitation, and that interference, if present, is markedly smaller than facilitation in this form of the Stroop effect. There was also a critical contrast between the working memory and classic Stroop effects in terms of facilitation and interference, with larger facilitation and smaller interference in the working memory Stroop effect than in the classic Stroop effect. Moreover, working memory for a color word can be either facilitated or interfered with by the perceptual judgment (color naming) of an interposed color patch during the retention interval, depending on whether the color patch is semantically congruent or incongruent with the color word. Together, these results suggest that both facilitation and interference mechanisms can contribute to the overall congruency effects in the working memory Stroop task., (© 2022. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

Cognitive control is an important ability instantiated in many situations such as conflict control (e.g., Stroop/Simon task) and the control of eye movements (e.g., saccades). However, it is unclear whether eye movement control shares a common cognitive control system with the conflict control. In Experiment 1, we asked participants to make a prosaccade or antisaccade and then to identify the color of a lateralized color word (i.e., a Stroop-Simon stimulus). The stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between the saccadic cue and the Stroop-Simon stimulus was manipulated to be either short (200 ms) or long (600 ms). Results showed that the Stroop effect at the response level and the (negative) Simon effect were smaller when the SOA was short than long, demonstrating a decline of response control over time after making a saccade. Moreover, this temporal change of the Simon effect was more pronounced in the antisaccade session than in the prosaccade session. Furthermore, individuals who had better performance in the antisaccade task performed better in the response control of Stroop interference. When the saccade task was removed in Experiment 2, the temporal declines of the response control observed in Experiment 1 were absent. Experiment 3 replicated the key results of Experiment 1 by replacing the Stroop-Simon task with a typical Simon task and separately testing the typical Stroop and Simon tasks. Overall, our findings suggest that a common system is shared between the control of eye movements and the conflict control at the response level., (© 2022. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

Standing compared to sitting, for instance at work, is associated with positive physical and mental health consequences. Indeed, studies suggest that performance in cognitive conflict tasks (e.g., Color Stroop tasks) is improved when subjects perform the task while standing compared to sitting (Rosenbaum et al., 2018; Smith et al., 2019). However, a recent study failed to replicate these findings in five attempts (Caron et al., 2020). We aimed to shed light on these discrepant results by means of two conceptual replications and a meta-analysis. Replication experiments showed typical congruency effects in the Color Stroop task, but failed to find any influence of posture on the Stroop effect even when we subjected data to a more sensitive analysis that controlled for individual variances between participants. Additionally, an explorative Bayesian analysis confirmed that both replications provided strong evidence against an interaction between body posture and the Stroop effect. Meta-analytic results showed that the confidence interval of the overall effect size for a modulation of the Stroop effect by body posture includes the null. Together, our results question whether standing modulates the Stroop effect in Color Stroop tasks and points out limitations of the influence of body posture on cognitive control tasks., (Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

A remarkable example of reducing Stroop interference is provided by the word blindness post-hypnotic suggestion (a suggestion to see words as meaningless during the Stroop task). This suggestion has been repeatedly demonstrated to halve Stroop interference when it is given to highly hypnotizable people. In order to explore how highly hypnotizable individuals manage to reduce Stroop interference when they respond to the word blindness suggestion, we tested four candidate strategies in two experiments outside of the hypnotic context. A strategy of looking away from the target words and a strategy of visual blurring demonstrated compelling evidence for substantially reducing Stroop interference in both experiments. However, the pattern of results produced by these strategies did not match those of the word blindness suggestion. Crucially, neither looking away nor visual blurring managed to speed up incongruent responses, suggesting that neither of these strategies is the likely underlying mechanism of the word blindness suggestion. Although the current results did not unravel the mystery of the word blindness suggestion, they showed that there are multiple voluntary ways through which participants can dramatically reduce Stroop interference., Competing Interests: At the time of writing, Prof. Zoltan Dienes was a Board Member of Royal Society Open Science but had no involvement in the review or assessment of the paper. All other authors declare no competing interests. The project was not supported by any grant., (© 2022 The Authors.)

The Stroop task, which examines an aspect of executive function/cognitive control, the ability to inhibit prepotent responses, has been relatively little examined in schizophrenia, and the findings have been inconsistent. Whether performance of this task is associated with failure of de-activation in the disorder is also uncertain. We examined 42 schizophrenic patients and 61 healthy controls during performance of an fMRI-adapted version of the Stroop task, the counting Stroop task. Task-related activations (incongruent > congruent condition) and de-activations (baseline > incongruent) were examined using whole-brain, voxel-based methods. In the healthy controls, task performance was found to be associated with activations in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, among other regions. De-activations were seen in the medial frontal cortex, the middle and posterior cingulate gyrus and cuneus, the parahippocampal gyrus and the hippocampus. The schizophrenic patients did not show reduced activation compared to the healthy controls. They did, however, show failure of de-activation in the medial frontal cortex. Our negative finding with respect to hypoactivation during performance of a task requiring inhibition of prepotent responses suggests that brain functional abnormality in schizophrenia may not affect all aspects of executive function/cognitive control. The finding of medial frontal cortex failure of de-activation adds to existing findings of default mode network dysfunction in the disorder., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

When it comes to simultaneous processing of two tasks, information processing capacity is usually below par and not desirable. Therefore, this preliminary study aimed to investigate the effect of transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on performing dual tasks. Twenty-six students (average age 25.2 ± 2.43 years) were selected and then randomly divided into experimental and sham groups. All of the participants conducted the Stroop effect test in a dual task situation before and after the tDCS. This test included two intervals between the stimuli of 100 and 900 ms. The results of mixed-ANOVA showed that the average second reaction time of the experimental stimulated group was reduced (in both dual tasks with congruent and incongruent stimuli) significantly after the tDCS. Therefore, it can be stated that the tDCS of the DLPFC increases the information processing speed and the capacity of attention and, as a result, decreases the effect of the psychological refractory period., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

The colour-word Stroop task produces both information conflict (detection of the ink colour vs word meaning) and task conflict (respond to the ink colour vs read the word). In this study, we measured both reaction time and pupil dilation, and the neutral stimuli in our study were non-readable letter strings as well as meaningless non-readable stimuli (i.e., coloured patches and abstract character strings). Our results showed slowest responses in the incongruent trials and fastest responses in the congruent trials. However, no differences were found between the investigated neutrals. In contrast, pupil dilation was largest in the incongruent trials and smallest in the neutral trials. Moreover, the more the neutral stimuli were meaningless, the less the pupil dilation that was observed. Our results suggest that non-word meaningless stimuli reduced task conflict (compared with all the investigated conditions). Neutral equivalence should be taken into consideration in Stroop and Stroop-like tasks.

Introduction: To determine if electrolyte or carbohydrate supplementation vs. water would limit the magnitude of dehydration and decline in cognitive function in humans following long-duration hyperthermic-exercise., Methods: 24 subjects performed 3 visits of 2 h walking (3mph/7% grade) in an environmental chamber (33 °C/10% relative humidity). In random order, subjects consumed water (W), electrolytes (Gatorade Zero; E), or electrolytes+carbohydrates (Gatorade; E+C). Throughout exercise (EX), subjects carried a 23 kg pack and drank ad-libitum. Pre-and post-EX, body mass (BM) and plasma osmolality (pOsm) were measured. Physiological Strain Index (PSI) and core temperature (T C ) were recorded every 15 min. Plasma glucose (GLU) was measured every 30 min. Cognitive processing (SCWT) was measured post-EX and compared to baseline (BL). A subset of 8 subjects performed a normothermic (N) protocol (21 °C/ambient humidity) to ascertain how the exercise stimulus influenced hydration status and cognition without heat., Results: There were no significant differences between fluid conditions (W, E, E+C) for BM loss (Δ2.5 ± 0.2, 2.5 ± 0.2, 2.3 ± 0.2 kg), fluid consumption (1.9 ± 0.2, 1.9 ± 0.2, 1.8 ± 0.2L), pOsm (Δ1.5 ± 2.7, 2.2 ± 2.4, 2.0 ± 1.5 mmol/L), peak-PSI (7.5 ± 0.4, 7.0 ± 0.6, 7.9 ± 0.5), and peak-T C (38.7 ± 0.1, 38.6 ± 0.2, 38.8 ± 0.2 °C). GLU decreased significantly in W and E, whereas it increased above BL in E+C at 60, 90, and 120 min (P < 0.05). Compared to BL values (43.6 ± 26 ms), SCWT performance significantly decreased in all conditions (463 ± 93, 422 ± 83, 140 ± 52 ms, P < 0.05). Importantly, compared to W and E, the impairment in SCWT was significantly attenuated in E+C (P < 0.05). As expected, when compared to the heat-stress protocol (W, E, E+C), N resulted in lower BM loss, fluid consumption, and peak-PSI (1.1 ± 0.1 kg, 1.2 ± 0.7L, 4.8, respectively), and improved SCWT performance., Conclusions: These data are the first to suggest that, independent of supplementation variety, cognitive processing significantly decreases immediately following long-duration exercise in the heat in healthy humans. Compared to water and fluids supplemented with only electrolytes, fluids supplemented with carbohydrates significantly blunts this decrease in cognitive function., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The aim of the present manuscript was to investigate the source of congruency effects in weak bilinguals (Experiment 1) and in early language learning (Experiment 2). In both studies, participants performed a bilingual version of a colour-word Stroop task. The standard finding is slower and less accurate responding when the word and colour are incongruent (e.g., "red" in blue) relative to congruent (e.g., "red" in red). This congruency effect occurs for the distracting colour words from both the first and second language. Both stimulus conflict (i.e., conflict between the meaning of the word and ink colour) and response conflict (i.e., conflict between possible response options) contribute to first-language congruency effects. According to some models of early language learning, only one of these two types of conflict should emerge for non-fluent languages. To separate stimulus and response conflict, we used a 2-to-1 keypress assignment manipulation. Interestingly, in one study both stimulus and response conflict were evidenced for the weakly spoken second language (English in native French speakers). In a second study, participants performed a short Croatian colour word learning phase before the Stroop procedure. Stimulus conflict was observed in response times and response conflict in errors for this recently-trained language. These findings suggest that the relatively low-proficient second language words are potent enough to affect semantic identification and response selection., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: This study investigated cognitive and emotional functioning in children and adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorders (DICCD)., Methods: Thirty patients with ADHD, 26 with DICCD, 22 with ADHD+DICCD were recruited from the outpatient department of Shanghai Changning Mental Health Center, plus 20 healthy controls (HC). Differences between the groups in cognitive and emotional functioning were examined using Golden's Stroop and Emotional Stroop tests. For Emotional Stroop Mean reaction time (RT) of positive word (POS) and negative word (NEG) with color congruence (C) or incongruence (I) were recorded as POS-C, POS-I, NEG-C and NEG-I, respectively., Results: For Golden's interference scores (IGs), both errors and RTs in the ADHD group were higher than in the other groups. Longer mean RTs of POS-C, POS-I, NEG-C and neural word (NEU) of the ADHD group, and NEG-I of ADHD+DICCD and DICCD groups were observed compared to HC. After 12 weeks of methylphenidate treatment, differences between ADHD subgroups and HC on Golden's Stroop RT disappeared, but differences in Golden's Stroop errors and Emotional Stroop mean RTs remained. The ADHD+DICCD group showed longer mean RTs in NEG-C, NEG-I and NEU of the Emotional Stroop test than the ADHD group., Conclusions: Our study shows that regardless of emotional responding, deficit in cognitive control is the core symptom of ADHD. However, emotionally biased stimuli may cause response inhibitory dysfunction among DICCD with callous-unemotional traits, and the comorbidity of ADHD and DICCD tends to account for the negative emotional response characteristic of DICCD. These deficits may be eliminated by medication treatment in ADHD, but not the ADHD with comorbid DICCD. Our results support the notion that ADHD with comorbid DICCD is more closely related to DICCD than to ADHD.

Background: As a disorder of brain dysfunction, migraine has been associated with cognitive decline. However, no consistent results with respect to the attention function in migraineurs have been found, and the relationship between attentional inhibition and migraine is also unclear. In this study, the attentional inhibition function was evaluated using event-related potentials (ERPs) while migraine patients and healthy controls were performing the color-word Stroop task., Methods: In this study, 75 migraine patients and 41 age-, gender-, and education-matched healthy controls were enrolled. The Stroop task was performed, and both behavioral and ERP data were analyzed., Results: As to the behavioral data, the migraine group had a longer reaction time compared to the control group, but no difference in Stroop effect was observed. With respect to ERP components, the amplitudes of both early and late medial frontal negativity (MFN) were decreased in the migraine group. Additionally, obvious differences in the early MFN and sustained potential (SP) amplitudes were found between patients with and without allodynia., Conclusions: At the behavioral level, migraine patients exhibited decreased executive ability but no obvious decline in inhibition. By contrast, a decline in attentional inhibition during the migraine interictal phase was confirmed by the analysis of ERP components, mainly those associated with changes in the conflict-monitoring stage, independent of confounding factors such as age, education, medication and mood disorders. Migraine patients with allodynia exhibited some significant differences in early MFN and SP compared to those without, supporting the hypothesis that migraine chronification aggravates the decline in attentional inhibition.

Background: The Stroop Colour and Word Test (SCWT) is the most extensively used neuropsychological test in humans to evaluate the ability to inhibit cognitive interference. Any music played while the listener's primary attention is focused on another activity is known as background music and its effects on SCWT have not been studied well., Objective: The current study was designed to evaluate the influence of different background music (classical and heavy metal) on inhibiting cognitive interference in young adults by using the Stroop Colour and Word Test., Methods: Eighty student volunteers were invited for the study after obtaining their informed consent. They were first tested for colour blindness using Ishihara's colour test, and once passed, they were recruited to perform a computerised Stroop colour-word interference test. Each participant was requested to take part in four reading exercises: monochrome words, rectangle colours, coloured words and colour naming, respectively. These exercises were performed under three different conditions such as silence (absence of background music), presence of heavy metal and classical music, respectively. The participants' reaction time, errors made and heart rate were recorded and compared., Results: The participants' reaction time was found to be significantly decreased with classical and heavy metal background music compared with the silence condition. The heart rate and errors made by the participants did not significantly change during any of the study conditions., Conclusions: Results of this study indicate the positive impact of background music on a cognitive interference task. Further studies are warranted to elucidate the underlying neural mechanisms.

Humans often rely on feedback to learn. Indeed, in learning the difference between feedback and an expected outcome is computed to inform future actions. Further, recent work has found that reward and feedback have a unique role in modulating conflict processing and cognitive control. However, it is still not clear how conflict, especially concerning the processing and evaluation of feedback, impacts learning. To address this, we examined the effects of feedback competition on feedback evaluation in a reinforcement learning task. Specifically, we had participants play a simple two-choice gambling game while electroencephalographic (EEG) data were recorded. On half of the experiment blocks, we reversed the meaning of performance feedback for each trial from its prepotent meaning to induce response conflict akin to the Stroop effect (e.g., '✓' meant incorrect). Behaviourally, we found that participants' accuracy was reduced as a result of incongruent feedback. Paralleling this, an analysis of our EEG revealed that incongruent feedback resulted in a reduction in amplitude of the reward positivity and the P300, components of the human event-related brain potential implicated in reward processing. Our results demonstrate the negative impact of conflict on feedback evaluation and the impact of this on subsequent performance., (Crown Copyright © 2021. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The Stroop effect describes interference in cognitive processing due to competing cognitive demands. Presenting emotionally laden stimuli creates similar Stroop-like effects that result from participants' attention being drawn to distractor stimuli. Here, we adapted the methods of a pictorial Stroop study for use with chimpanzees (N = 6), gorillas (N = 7), and Japanese macaques (N = 6). We tested all subjects via touchscreens following the same protocol. Ten of the 19 subjects passed pre-test training. Subjects who reached criterion were then tested on a standard color-interference Stroop test, which revealed differential accuracy in the primates' responses across conditions. Next, to test for an emotional Stroop effect, we presented subjects with photographs that were either positively valenced (a preferred food) or negatively valenced (snakes). In the emotional Stroop task, as predicted, the primates were less accurate in trials which presented emotionally laden stimuli as compared to control trials, but there were differences in the apes' and monkeys' response patterns. Furthermore, for both Stroop tests, while we found that subjects' accuracy rates were reduced by test stimuli, in contrast to previous research, we found no difference across trial types in the subjects' response latencies across conditions.

Background: Cognitive processes associated with frontal lobe functioning are often termed "executive functions." Two such processes are initiation and inhibition or the starting and stopping of responses. It has recently been claimed dysfunction of executive abilities can be explained by a single measure of fluid intelligence. Here, we test this claim, specifically for the executive abilities of response initiation and inhibition, across the healthy lifespan., Method: In a cohort of 336 healthy adults (18-89 years), initiation and inhibition were assessed with the Hayling test, Stroop test, and phonemic and semantic verbal fluency. All participants also completed a measure of fluid intelligence. The relationship between fluid intelligence and executive measures was explored across the lifespan using a continuous approach. Mediation models were computed to assess whether age-related decline across the four initiation/inhibition tasks could be fully explained by a single measure of fluid intelligence., Results: Age was negatively correlated with response initiation/inhibition and fluid intelligence. The mediation analyses identified only partial mediation of fluid intelligence for age and Hayling performance. By contrast, fluid intelligence did not mediate performance on the Stroop test or phonemic and semantic verbal fluency., Conclusions: Response initiation/inhibition are not able to be explained by fluid intelligence. The results support a multifactorial theory of executive functions and provide evidence for the inclusion of multiple specific executive measures in a thorough neuropsychological assessment of age-related cognitive decline., (© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permission@oup.com.)

While several theories assume that responses to hypnotic suggestions can be implemented without executive intentions, the metacognitive class of theories postulate that the behaviors produced by hypnotic suggestions are intended and the accompanying feeling of involuntariness is only a consequence of strategically not being aware of the intention. Cold control theory asserts that the only difference between a hypnotic and non-hypnotic response is this metacognitive one, that is, whether or not one is aware of one's intention to perform the relevant act. To test the theory, we compared the performance of highly suggestible participants in reducing the Stroop interference effect in a post-hypnotic suggestion condition (word blindness: that words will appear as a meaningless foreign script) and in a volitional condition (asking the participants to imagine the words as a meaningless foreign script). We found that participants had equivalent expectations that the posthypnotic suggestion and the volitional request would help control the conflicting information. Further, participants felt they had more control over experiencing the words as meaningless with the request rather than the suggestion; and they experienced the request largely as imagination and the suggestion largely as perception. That is, we set up the interventions we required for the experiment to constitute a test of cold control theory. Both the suggestion and the request reduced Stroop interference. Crucially, there was Bayesian evidence that the reduction in Stroop interference was the same between the suggestion and the volitional request. That is, the results support the claim that responding hypnotically does not grant a person greater first order abilities than they have non-hypnotically, consistent with cold control theory., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Pink and blue colors have been found to associate with gender stereotypes in previous Western studies. The purpose of the present study was to explore the neuropsychological processing basis of this effect in contemporary Chinese society. We presented stereotypically masculine or feminine occupation words in either pink or blue colors to Chinese college students in a modified Stroop paradigm, in which participants were asked to classify each occupation word by gender as quickly and accurately as possible. Event-related potential (ERP) signals were concurrently recorded in order to identify the temporal dynamics of gender stereotypical interference effect. The behavioral results showed that pink-masculine stimuli elicited a longer response time and lower accuracy than blue-masculine stimuli in the participants, while no such differences were observed between pink-feminine and blue-feminine conditions. The ERP results further revealed distinctive neural processing stages for pink-masculine stimuli (i.e., in comparison to the other three types of stimuli) in P200, N300, N400, and P600. Overall, our results suggested that pink but not blue was a "gendered" color in Chinese culture. Moreover, our ERP findings contributed to the understanding of the neural mechanism underlying the processing of gender-color stereotypes., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Li, Du, Song, Wu and Liu.)

Patients with stress-related Exhaustion Disorder (ED) have problems with memory and executive function. These problems have been associated with deviant activity in prefrontal cortex (PFC). We investigated cognitive performance and functional activity in the PFC during prolonged mental activity in patients with ED ( n  = 20, 16 women) with a mean duration since diagnosis of 46 ± 23 months in comparison to healthy individuals ( n  = 20, 12 women). A block of six neuropsychological tests was performed in a sequence that was repeated once. The brain imaging technique, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used for all tests. There were no differences between the groups in terms of changes over time, i.e. difference between first and second test block. In the Stroop-Simon test, the controls showedhigher functional activity in the frontal cortex. In the left ventrolateral PFC, we observed an increased activity in controls in the incongruent compared to the congruent trials, whereas no changes were detected in the ED patient group. During processing speed tasks, only ED patients showed higher functional activity in right dorsolateral PFC. The ED patients reported lower subjective energy level and they also performed less well on a mental control task compared to healthy individuals. In conclusion, ED patients showed altered functional activity compared to controls, indicating that ED patients process information differently in the prefrontal cortex, but the functional activity did not change during the 2½ hr procedure, as revealed by the test-retest design. Lay summary In this paper we show that patient with exhaustion disorder have a reduced functional activity in the prefrontal cortex. This functional activity was not affected by 2.5 hours mental activity.

The number meaning of grammatically plural nouns is to some extent context sensitive. In negative sentences, plural nouns typically receive an inclusive reading referring to any number of individuals (one or many). This contrasts with their more frequent exclusive reading referring to a group of two or more individuals. The present study investigated whether a plural noun in a negative sentence is treated as inclusive immediately when it is encountered or whether this interpretation is delayed. In an experiment using a technique based on a numerical variant of the Stroop effect (Berent et al. in J Mem Lang 53:342-358, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2005.05.002 ; Patson and Warren in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 36(3):782-789, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018783 ), participants counted visually presented singular and plural Polish nouns embedded in either affirmative or negative sentences. The nouns were displayed once or as two copies. Plural nouns were easier to count when they were repeated twice on the screen than when only one copy was displayed. For singular nouns this pattern was reversed and the effect was weaker. Crucially, no difference was found for plural nouns appearing in affirmative and negative sentences. This indicated that an inclusive ("one or more") reading of plural nouns in the scope of sentential negation was not immediate. The results are in line with past research suggesting that the semantic processing of a negative sentence may proceed in two phases (Fischler et al. in Psychophysiology 20(4):400-409, 1983. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1983.tb00920.x ; Kaup et al. in J Pragmat 38:1033-1050, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.09.012 ; Lüdtke et al. in J Cogn Neurosci 20(8):1355-1370, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20093 ; Spychalska in Proceedings of the 2011 ESSLLI student session, 2011).

Three experiments investigated changes in the sizes of Stroop-like congruency effects of hand- and foot-related action verbs on the latencies of hand and foot motor responses. Congruency effects were present in all experiments, with faster responses for a verb associated with the responding limb than for a verb associated with the opposite limb (e.g., faster foot than hand responses in the presence of the verb "kick"). As compared with a task in which the verbs were completely irrelevant, this congruency effect was greatly increased when participants had to make lexical decisions about the verbs, and the effect was also increased-although to a lesser extent-when participants had to make physical (i.e., size) judgments about them. In some cases, the congruence effect was also larger when the hand/foot discrimination response was determined by a reading task than by a color discrimination task. We conclude that the Stroop-like congruence effects of action verbs do not result from fully automatic processing but instead depend on at least the duration and linguistic nature of verb processing., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This study investigated the event-related brain potentials associated with the olfactory-visual cross-modal Stroop effect and its modulation by olfactory-induced and self-reported affective states. Eighteen healthy participants were presented with an olfactory stimulus and the image of a plant, and they had to categorize the olfactory attribute of the image as "aromatic" or "pungent" by pressing the relevant button as quickly as possible. The type of olfactory-visual stimuli (congruent or incongruent) and the valence of the olfactory-induced emotional states (positive or negative) were manipulated following a 2 × 2 factorial design. Interference effects were observed at the behavioral and the electrophysiological levels: response times recorded in the incongruent condition were higher than those observed in the congruent condition; an incongruent minus congruent negative difference component was discovered between 350 and 550 ms after stimulus onset in the negative-but not in the positive-olfactory-induced emotional state condition. This ND350-550 component was interpreted as reflecting the amount of selective attention involved in the olfactory-visual cross-modal Stroop effect. These results are also consistent with a facilitatory effect of positive emotional state on selective attention which could reduce brain potentials associated with the cross-modal interference effect., (Copyright © 2020 Xu, Dupuis-Roy, Jiang, Guo and Xiao.)

The Stroop effect is typically much larger than the reverse Stroop effect. One explanation for this asymmetry asserts that interference between the attended feature and an incongruent unattended feature depends on which feature is more strongly associated with the processing typically needed to complete the task. Accordingly, because identification of the target's color or the target word (as in the traditional Stroop paradigm) is more strongly associated with verbal processing than visual processing, the target's meaning should interfere with identification of the target's color (Stroop) more than vice versa (reverse Stroop). In contrast, localization is more strongly associated with visual processing, so strength-of-association predicts that the target's color should interfere with localizing the target word (reverse Stroop) more than vice versa (Stroop). Experiments 1 and 2 supported the strength-of-association account: compared to Stroop, the reverse Stroop effect was smaller for an identification task, but larger for a localization task. Because overall responses were slower for the reverse Stroop condition than the Stroop condition in Experiment 2, we entertained two alternative explanations for the reverse Stroop effect being larger than the Stroop effect. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that the larger reverse Stroop effect could not have been due to scaling, and Experiment 5 showed that it could not have been due to covert translation. Taken together, these experiments demonstrate the role of strength of association in generating the classic Stroop asymmetry, and pave the way for future exploration of the reverse Stroop effect using localization tasks., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The Stroop task gives rise to two major conflicts: the task conflict (respond to the color vs. read the word) and the information conflict that can result from the stimulus-response compatibility (SRC; difference between two responses) or from the stimulus-stimulus compatibility (SSC; difference between the two contradictive pieces of information). We conducted a two-to-one Stroop experiment (i.e., two colors are mapped to one response key) and measured reaction time and pupil dilation. The results showed clear evidence for informational conflict composed of both the SRC and SSC. In addition, pupil indications for task conflict appeared earlier than indications for both the SSC and the SRC, in line with the theory regarding task conflict.

Measures of sensory and cognitive inhibition were obtained from university students with and without a history of chronic pain. The form of sensory inhibition measured was diffuse noxious inhibitory controls (DNIC), the capacity of a painful stimulus to reduce the subjective intensity of a second stimulus delivered to a remote body site. To measure cognitive inhibition, the Stroop effect was used. Participants with a history of chronic pain showed less DNIC (i.e., less sensory inhibition) than the healthy controls, but had a smaller Stroop effect (indicating greater cognitive inhibition). The fact that chronic pain history is associated with opposite changes in these two measures casts doubt on the view that the two inhibitory processes are related. Scores on each experimental measure were equivalent in pain-history subjects with ongoing chronic pain and those whose chronic pain had resolved. This equivalence suggests that chronic pain in childhood or adolescence may have lingering effects on sensory and cognitive inhibition.

By means of transcranial direct current stimulation applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, we investigated the causal role of increased or decreased excitability of this brain region for two facets of executive functions: working memory and Stroop interference control. We tested 1) whether anodal tDCS of the left DLPFC enhances working memory 15 minutes after termination of stimulation and in the absence of direct task practice under stimulation; 2) whether anodal tDCS of the left DLPFC enhances interference control, as evidenced by Stroop performance and Stroop sequence effects; and 3) whether cathodal tDCS leads to compromised executive functioning compared to anodal stimulation. In a between-subject design with 88 healthy psychology students, we compared the impact of anodal and cathodal stimulation against a sham condition, on performance on a Stroop task (during active stimulation) and on an n-back task (completed 15 minutes after active stimulation ended). We found significantly enhanced accuracy in the n-back task after anodal stimulation compared with sham, as well as speeded reactions in the Stroop tasks independent of trial type. By contrast, we found no modulation of Stroop interference effects or Stroop sequence effects. No inhibitory effects of cathodal stimulation were observed. These results support the causal role of the left DLPFC in working memory but lend no support to its involvement in Stroop interference control.

The purpose of this study was to illustrate that people's affective valuation of exercise can be identified in their faces. The study was conducted with a software for automatic facial expression analysis and it involved testing the hypothesis that positive or negative affective valuation occurs spontaneously when people are reminded of exercise. We created a task similar to an emotional Stroop task, in which participants responded to exercise-related and control stimuli with a positive or negative facial expression (smile or frown) depending on whether the photo was presented upright or tilted. We further asked participants how much time they would normally spend for physical exercise, because we assumed that the affective valuation of those who exercise more would be more positive. Based on the data of 86 participants, regression analysis revealed that those who reported less exercise and a more negative reflective evaluation of exercise initiated negative facial expressions on exercise-related stimuli significantly faster than those who reported exercising more often. No significant effect was observed for smile responses. We suspect that responding with a smile to exercise-related stimuli was the congruent response for the majority of our participants, so that for them no Stroop interference occurred in the exercise-related condition. This study suggests that immediate negative affective reactions to exercise-related stimuli result from a postconscious automatic process and can be detected in the study participants' faces. It furthermore illustrates how methodological paradigms from social-cognition research (here: the emotional Stroop paradigm) can be adapted to collect and analyze biometric data for the investigation of exercisers' and non-exercisers' automatic valuations of exercise., (Copyright © 2019 Brand and Ulrich.)