Working-memory capacity and the control of attention: The contributions of goal neglect, response competition, and task set to Stroop interference.

TLDR

The study aims to determine how working‑memory capacity and task context influence Stroop interference through goal maintenance and competition resolution. The authors conceptualize Stroop interference as arising from goal maintenance and competition resolution, whose relative influence depends on working‑memory capacity and the task set from current and prior contexts. Across five experiments, higher working‑memory capacity predicted better Stroop performance; low‑capacity participants made more errors on rare incongruent trials when goal maintenance was challenged, while in conditions with fewer congruent trials or following high‑congruency blocks, capacity predicted response‑time interference, and WM effects appeared in latency rather than accuracy when the task goal was reinforced.

Abstract

Individual differences in working-memory (WM) capacity predicted performance on the Stroop task in 5 experiments, indicating the importance of executive control and goal maintenance to selective attention. When the Stroop task encouraged goal neglect by including large numbers of congruent trials (RED presented in red), low WM individuals committed more errors than did high WM individuals on the rare incongruent trials (BLUE in red) that required maintaining access to the "ignore-the-word" goal for accurate responding. In contrast, in tasks with no or few congruent trials, or in high-congruency tasks that followed low-congruency tasks, WM predicted response-time interference. WM was related to latency, not accuracy, in contexts that reinforced the task goal and so minimized the difficulty of actively maintaining it. The data and a literature review suggest that Stroop interference is jointly determined by 2 mechanisms, goal maintenance and competition resolution, and that the dominance of each depends on WM capacity, as well as the task set induced by current and previous contexts.