Behavioral and electrophysiological investigation of semantic and response conflict in the Stroop task

By combining the semantic Stroop paradigm (e.g., Klein in American Journal of Psychology 77:576–588, 1964) with a single-letter coloring (SLC) procedure (e.g., Besner et al. in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 4:221–225, 1997), this research investigated whether the frequently reported Stroop-related event-related potential (ERP) effect arising about 400 ms after stimulus onset (Ninc) is sensitive to the semantic and/or the response conflict. Consistent with our past findings (e.g., Augustinova et al. in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 17:827-833, 2010), SLC speeded up reaction times for standard-incongruent items only, indicating that SLC reduced the response conflict that these (but not color-associated and neutral) items involve. Ninc amplitudes were more negative for standard-incongruent and color-associated than for color-neutral items. Importantly, this difference was not modulated by SLC. Hence, the behavioral and ERP results conjointly suggest that the Stroop-related Ninc is sensitive to semantic rather than to response and/or general conflict.