Perceptual conflict and response competition: Event-related potentials of the stroop effect

Abstract

Objective: The aim of the present study was to analyze electrophysiological activity associated with the Stroop effect. Method: The sample included 50 healthy volunteer adults (23 female and 27 male) from the university population. Stimulation, recording and analyses were carried under NeuroScan 4.2 hardware-software system. The effect of the experimental variables (stimulus congruency, response accuracy and electrode location) on event-related potentials (ERPs) was studied using 2×2×3 analysis of variance for repeated measures. Results: The Stroop effect was demonstrated as prolonged reaction time to incongruent stimuli and increased total number of missed stimuli. Principal components analysis (PCA) showed that Stroop performance was related such factors as selective attention, interference, and resistance to interference. The electrophysiological Stroop effect was demonstrated as increased amplitude of P3 and N4 peaks for incongruent stimuli, and of N2, P3, N3, and N4 peaks for incorrect responses. Conclusion: Increased amplitude of P3 and N4 peaks associated with stimulus-related activation has been suggested to reflect conflict detection process. The variations in amplitudes for incorrect responses were complicated. While the amplitude of the N2 and P3 components increased only for incongruent stimuli, those of the N3 and N4 components increased for both congruent and incongruent stimuli. It was concluded that these earlier and later activations were associated with response competition and error detection processes, respectively. In this respect, these findings support both the perceptual conflict and the response competition hypotheses of Stroop interference.