Inclusion of a Mixed Condition Makes the Day/Night Task More Analogous to the Adult Stroop

ABSTRACT

In a study with 4-year-old children, we added a mixed condition to the traditional day/night task to examine performance and response times for congruent and incongruent trials within the same condition. There were no differences in percentage correct performance between the incongruent and mixed conditions; however, children performed best on the congruent condition. EEG recordings showed differential patterns of frontal power and coherence suggesting increasing cognitive load from congruent to incongruent to mixed conditions. Our pattern of findings suggest that the mixed condition of the day/night Stroop task is a more appropriate child equivalent to the adult color-word Stroop task.

Acknowledgments

The content of this manuscript is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NICHD or the National Institutes of Health. We thank Tashauna Blankenship for her assistance with data collection; Ran Liu for her assistance with reliability coding for task performance; and Kara Vlahcevic for her assistance with reliability coding for reaction time. We are grateful to the children and their mothers for their participation in our study.

Funding

This research was supported by grant HD049878 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) awarded to Martha Ann Bell.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grant HD049878 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) awarded to Martha Ann Bell.