Revisiting the Automaticity of Reading: Electrophysiological Recordings Show That Stroop Words Capture Spatial Attention

Interference in the Stroop task is reduced when the word and color patch are placed at different locations and is diluted further by the presence of another distractor that is response neutral. Such dilution indicates that reading is not independent of an observer's attentional focus and thus i...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of experimental psychology. General 2023-02, Vol.152 (2), p.309-321
Main Authors: Lowery, Andrew, McDonald, John J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Automatism
Brain
Cognition & reasoning
Color
Color Perception - physiology
Electrophysiology
Evoked Potentials
Female
Focused Attention
Human
Humans
Male
Psychological aspects
Reaction Time - physiology
Reading
Spatial Perception
Stroop Effect
Stroop Test
Visual Field
Young Adult
Young adults
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Summary:Interference in the Stroop task is reduced when the word and color patch are placed at different locations and is diluted further by the presence of another distractor that is response neutral. Such dilution indicates that reading is not independent of an observer's attentional focus and thus is not a fully automatic process. So where does reading fall on the automaticity continuum? To address this question, we sought to determine whether an irrelevant word that appears abruptly in the field of view invariably draws attention to its location or whether observers can successfully ignore it while identifying a centrally presented target. In two experiments, electrical brain activity was recorded while healthy young adults participated in nonintegrated Stroop tasks. Irrelevant color words appearing randomly to the left or right of a target shape elicited an event-related potential component that reflects the spatial focusing of attention (posterior contralateral N2; N2pc). This N2pc was observed when participants discriminated the color of the target and when they discriminated the shape of the target. These findings demonstrate that color words reflexively capture spatial attention even when their meaning is unrelated to the task at hand. We conclude that although reading is not fully automatic, skilled readers cannot ignore words that appear abruptly in their field of view.
ISSN:0096-3445
1939-2222
DOI:10.1037/xge0001260