Stroroop Language

In a vast majority of the research found, three simple tasks were conducted on participants of different languages, and age ranges. Participants were occasionally asked to complete more than one of these tasks, depending on the goal of the researchers. Almost anyone can complete these tasks, however if necessary, they should be modified to each group of participants appropriately. For example, if the participants only speak English and/or Spanish, the words in the Stroop task should only be in one of those two (not in Portuguese). Within each of the studies that were found, it appeared that the researchers appropriately modified each of the tests to obtain the best results. These three tasks are simple to conceptualize, but can feel challenging
Simon task as described by Bialystok, Klein, Craik, and Viswanathan (2004) is one that focuses on the congruency and appropriateness of a response to a stimulus. In this task, there will be a specific stimulus (ex. A square or a circle) that will be a certain color (ex. Red or blue). The specific color of the stimulus would be linked to a response key (typically one of two on the opposite sides of the keyboard). The goal would be to press the correct response key; a conflict arising when the stim ulus is on the opposite side that the color of the stimulus directs the participant to press (an example of an incongruent trial). In the experiment conducted by Goal, Campanelli, and Spiro III (2015), 192 trials were given to each participant. Of these trials, half of them were given as congruent trials, and the other as incongruent trials. The participants were graded based on how quickly (or slowly) they responded between each of the trials. In their experiment, Goal, Campanelli, and Spiro III found among the results that both age was a strong indiciator on how well one would perform. A common trend being that the older the participant was, the bigger the Simon effect (and the younger they were, the smaller the effect). In terms of language proficiency, interestingly enough, it isn’t balanced bilinguals (meaning bilinguals that consider themselves fluent in both languages) that perform better on the trials, but unbalanced bilinguals. The theory behind this finding, proficiency as a predictor, is that participants who are not proficient in both languages may need to exercise more inhibition of their native (and more stimulated) language. These results from the Simon task are a wonderful example of how one does not need to be fully fluent in a language to benefit from learning