Response Time Distribution Analysis of Semantic and Response Interference in a Manual Response Stroop Task

Previous analyses of response time distributions have shown that the Stroop effect is observed in the mode (mu) and standard deviation (sigma) of the normal part of the distribution, as well as its tail (tau). Specifically, interference related to semantic and response processes has been suggested to specifically affect the mode and tail, respectively. However, only one study in the literature has directly manipulated semantic interference, and none manipulating response interference. The present research aims to address this gap by manipulating both semantic and response interference in a manual response Stroop task, and examining how these components of Stroop interference affect the response time distribution. Ex-Gaussian analysis showed both semantic and response conflict to only affect tau. Analyzing the distribution by rank-ordered response times (Vincentizing) showed converging results as the magnitude of both semantic and response conflict increased with slower response times. Additionally, response conflict appeared earlier on the distribution compared to semantic conflict. These findings further highlight the difficulty in attributing specific psychological processes to different parameters (i.e., mu, sigma, and tau). The effect of different response modalities on the makeup of Stroop interference is also discussed.