Universität Bielefeld - Sonderforschungsbereich 360
How Does Attention Help Select Verbal Actions?
Ardi
Roelofs
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics
Nijmegen, Netherlands
Monday, May 22nd, 2000, 4 p.m., Hörsaal 9
The attentional control of verbal action has in its simplest
form been most intensively studied using the color-word
Stroop task (Stroop, 1935, JEP). But after more than half a
century of research, the Stroop phenomenon has still not
been fully explained. Color naming is inhibited by
incongruent color words, but word reading not by incongruent
colors. When colors have to be named, maximal impact of
incongruent words is observed when the words appear within
100 msec of the colors, whereas facilitation from preexposed
congruent words is constant. I show that existing models
account for the findings from a simultaneous presentation of
color and word but fail to explain the time course of the
effects. Next, I present a further development of the
WEAVER++ model of word production (Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer,
1999, BBS; Roelofs, 1992, 1997, Cognition) and its
application to the Stroop task. The model accounts for the
basic Stroop effects and for performance in variants of the
task that manipulate the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA),
response set membership, semantic distance, the stimulus
dimensions, task and spatial-location uncertainty, response
mode and type, and basis of responding. Also, findings from
the picture-word task and from different age groups,
bilinguals, and clinical groups are explained. Computer
simulations and the results of a series of new empirical
experiments are reported in support of the model.
Anke Weinberger, 2000-04-28