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Strategies that reduce Stroop interference.

Palfi, B., Parris, B. A., Collins, A.F. and Dienes, Z., 2022. Strategies that reduce Stroop interference. Royal Society Open Science, 9 (3), 202136.

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DOI: 10.1098/rsos.202136

Abstract

A remarkable example of reducing Stroop interference is provided by the word blindness post-hypnotic suggestion (a suggestion to see words as meaningless during the Stroop task). This suggestion has been repeatedly demonstrated to halve Stroop interference when it is given to highly hypnotizable people. In order to explore how highly hypnotizable individuals manage to reduce Stroop interference when they respond to the word blindness suggestion, we tested four candidate strategies in two experiments outside of the hypnotic context. A strategy of looking away from the target words and a strategy of visual blurring demonstrated compelling evidence for substantially reducing Stroop interference in both experiments. However, the pattern of results produced by these strategies did not match those of the word blindness suggestion. Crucially, neither looking away nor visual blurring managed to speed up incongruent responses, suggesting that neither of these strategies is the likely underlying mechanism of the word blindness suggestion. Although the current results did not unravel the mystery of the word blindness suggestion, they showed that there are multiple voluntary ways through which participants can dramatically reduce Stroop interference.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:2054-5703
Uncontrolled Keywords:Stroop effect;cognitive control;higher order thoughts;metacognition;post-hypnotic suggestion
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:36818
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:04 Apr 2022 14:42
Last Modified:04 Apr 2022 14:42

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