Ó 2013 Federation of European Psychophysiology Societies

Article

Semantic Conflict Processing

in the Color-Word Stroop
and the Emotional Stroop
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Event-Related Potential (ERP) Correlates

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Montserrat Zurrón, Marta Ramos-Goicoa, and Fernando Díaz

Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, University of Santiago de Compostela,
Galicia, Spain

Abstract. With the aim of establishing the temporal locus of the semantic conflict in color-word Stroop and emotional Stroop phenomena, we
analyzed the Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) elicited by nonwords, incongruent and congruent color words, colored words with positive and
negative emotional valence, and colored words with neutral valence. The incongruent, positive, negative, and neutral stimuli produced
interference in the behavioral response to the color of the stimuli. The P150/N170 amplitude was sensitive to the semantic equivalence of both
dimensions of the congruent color words. The P3b amplitude was smaller in response to incongruent color words and to positive, negative, and
neutral colored words than in response to the congruent color words and colored nonwords. There were no differences in the ERPs induced in
response to colored words with positive, negative, and neutral valence. Therefore, the P3b amplitude was sensitive to interference from the
semantic content of the incongruent, positive, negative, and neutral words in the color-response task, independently of the emotional content of
the colored words. In addition, the P3b amplitude was smaller in response to colored words with positive, negative, and neutral valence than in
response to the incongruent color words. Overall, these data indicate that the temporal locus of the semantic conflict generated by the
incongruent color words (in the color-word Stroop task) and by colored words with positive, negative, and neutral valence (in the emotional
Stroop task) appears to occur in the range 300–450 ms post-stimulus.

Keywords: color-word Stroop, emotional Stroop, temporal principal components analysis, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs), semantic conflict,
attention

The color-word Stroop effect or interference effect
describes the slower response to the color in which incon-
gruent color words are printed (e.g., the word ‘‘blue’’
printed in red) than to the color of colored nonwords (col-
ored Xs, colored symbols, or colored marks), or to the color
of congruent color words (e.g., the word ‘‘red’’ printed in
red). The phenomenon was first described by J.R. Stroop
in 1935 and was attributed to interference from the word
in the task of responding to the color. This is one of the
most robust phenomena in the field of Psychology (for a
review, see MacLeod, 1991).
As colored words with meanings unrelated to the color
also caused interference (see MacLeod, 1991) and there
was interest in studying the attentional components of the
emotions, several researchers began to use colored words
with emotional valence in a task named the ‘‘emotional
Stroop.’’ In such tasks, participants are required to respond
to the color of colored word stimuli with different emo-
tional valences, while ignoring the meaning of the word.
The hypothesis underlying studies that use the emotional
Stroop is that the semantic content of colored words with
negative emotional valence preferentially captures the
attention of the participants (because it provides an adaptive
advantage) and therefore should generate more interference
than colored words with neutral or positive valence (see
MacLeod, 1991; Williams, Mathews, & MacLeod, 1996).
The Parallel Distributed Processing model (PDP;
Cohen, Dunbar, & McClelland, 1990), which is widely
accepted by the scientific community, assumes that both
dimensions of the stimuli (the meaning and the color of
the word) are processed in parallel but with different
strength, and that both lines of processing may come into
conflict in one or more phases when the two dimensions
do not coincide, as with incongruent color words or when
the colored word has emotional valence.
With respect to the color-word Stroop, De Houwer
(2003) and Van Veen and Carter (2005) demonstrated that
the interference effect was generated by two conflicts, one

Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164

DOI: 10.1027/0269-8803/a000100
 150 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
semantic and the other related to the response, thus integrat-
ing to the two main hypotheses: the response conflict
hypothesis (Dyer, 1973; Morton, 1969; Morton & Cham-
bers, 1973; Posner & Snyder, 1975) and the semantic con-
flict hypothesis (Luo, 1999; Seymour, 1977). The semantic
conflict occurs between the unit that semantically processes
the word and the unit that semantically processes the color;
the response conflict occurs between the unit that prepares
the response to the word and the unit that prepares the
response to the color of the incongruent stimuli.
According to the PDP model, in the emotional Stroop
effect, the interference will be caused only by the semantic
conflict (the emotional Stroop does not produce a response
conflict because the meaning of the words is not related to
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
the response); the greater interference from colored words
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
with negative emotional valence is derived from the fact
that negative emotional semantic content will be processed
with greater strength than positive or neutral emotional
content.
The Stroop test is widely used in neuropsychological
evaluation to determine the capacity of a person to direct
their attention toward relevant information, while inhibiting
irrelevant information. The time between presentation of
the stimulus and the behavioral response is measured in
the test. The response times are measures of the speed of
final processing and although they have been demonstrated
to be of great use, techniques are now available that provide
more specific indices of the temporal course of the conflict
processes that the Stroop task generates. Therefore, in sev-
eral studies, Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) have been
recorded in response to Stroop-type color word stimuli.
ERPs provide information about the neural responses that
take place during information processing with a temporal
resolution of milliseconds, which enables researchers to fol-
low the temporal course of processing. Therefore, ERPs
have helped to identify the temporal locus of the semantic
conflict generated in the Stroop test.
Specifically, in a recent study (Zurrn, Pouso, Lindn,
Galdo, & Daz, 2009), ERP data elicited by congruent
and incongruent color words were recorded in a task in
which the participants had to judge the congruence/incon-
gruence of color word stimuli (by stating whether or not
the chromatic and semantic dimensions of the stimuli
matched each other, which minimizes the conflict between
responses). A temporal Principal Components Analysis
(tPCA) was applied to the ERP data, and it was found that
the amplitude of the P300 component (P3b), in the 300–
450 ms interval, was sensitive to the congruence/incongru-
ence of the stimuli. As the difference between the two stim-
uli was that one (incongruent) generated a semantic conflict
and the other (congruent) did not, it was concluded that the
temporal locus of the semantic conflict may be in the 300–
450 ms time window, in which the P300 component was
identified.
In tasks in which participants were asked to respond to
the color of the stimuli, the ERP amplitudes in the 300–
450 ms interval were also found to differ between congru-
ent and incongruent color word stimuli, also indicating that
the semantic conflict may occur in this time window,
although there is some controversy concerning the ERP
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
components identified in this latency range. Several authors
have identified (particularly at frontal electrodes) a deflec-
tion denominated N450 or Ni or medial frontal negativity,
although it is not usually negative (Chen, Bailey, Tiernan,
& West, 2011; Kray, Eppinger, & Mecklinger, 2005;
McNeely, West, Christensen, & Alain, 2003; Rebai, Ber-
nard, & Lannou, 1997; West, 2003, 2004; West & Alain,
2000a). However, other authors have identified the P300
component (Ilan & Polich, 1999, Potter, Jory, Bassett,
Barrett, & Mychalkiw, 2002), and yet others the P300 fol-
lowed by the N450 (West & Alain, 2000b; West, Jakubek,
Wymbs, Perry, & Moore, 2005). Therefore, it is important
to clarify the component(s) identified in this latency range
in studies involving color-response Stroop tasks.
With regard to the emotional Stroop, several ERP stud-
ies have been carried out with healthy adult subjects
(Franken, Gootjes, & van Serien, 2009; Frhholz,
Jellinghaus, & Herrmann, 2011; Gootjes, Coppens, Zwaan,
Franken, & van Strien, 2011; Li, Zinbarg, & Paller, 2007;
McNeely, Lau, Christensen, & Alain, 2008; Sass et al.,
2010; Stewart et al., 2010; Taake, Jaspers-Fayer, & Liotti,
2009; Thomas, Johnstone, & Gonsalvez, 2007; van Hooff,
Dietz, Sharma, & Bowman, 2008). Negative and neutral
colored words were presented in these studies, and positive
colored words were also included in some of the studies.
Nevertheless, the semantic conflict involving colored words
with positive, negative, and neutral valence has not been
considered. To study this conflict, the ERP elicited by posi-
tive, negative, and neutral colored words must be compared
with those elicited by a condition in which the stimuli are
colored nonwords. However, colored nonwords have not
been evaluated.
The objective of these studies was to determine whether
ERP data provide evidence for preferential neural process-
ing of colored words with negative emotional valence over
the positive and neutral colored words. However, the results
for the ERP data from emotional Stroop differ widely and
are confusing as regards both identification of the ERP
components and their topographical distribution, mainly
for components in the temporal window between 300 and
500 ms. Thus, a positive parietal wave (P290) and a nega-
tive going wave (N450) (which was not always negative)
have been identified at fronto-central sites (and with a
wider distribution) in this temporal window, as have the
LPP (Late Positive Potential) component and the P3 com-
ponent (Franken et al., 2009; Frhholz et al., 2011; Gootjes
et al., 2011; Li et al., 2007; McNeely et al., 2008; Sass
et al., 2010; Stewart et al., 2010; Taake et al., 2009;
Thomas et al., 2007; van Hooff et al., 2008).
In the present study, colored nonwords, congruent and
incongruent color words, and positive, negative, and neutral
colored words were presented, and the participants had to
respond to the color of the stimuli. The Reaction Time
(RT), the number of errors, and the ERPs were recorded
for each of the six types of stimuli. In order to determine
the characteristic components in the waveforms obtained
for the six types of stimuli, the ERP data were analyzed
by tPCA.
The objectives of this study in relation to the color-word
Stroop were as follows: (1) to determine which ERP
Hogrefe Publishing
 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
component(s) are sensitive to the semantic conflict gener-
ated by the incongruent color words, and (2) to confirm that
the temporal locus of this conflict may occur between 300
and 450 ms, as found in previous studies. The objectives of
the study in relation to the emotional Stroop included the
following: (3) to determine which ERP component(s) are
sensitive to the semantic conflict generated by the positive,
negative, and neutral colored words, (4) to identify the tem-
poral locus of the semantic conflict generated by the three
types of colored words, and (5) to test whether the behav-
ioral and/or ERP data indicate preferential processing of
negative colored words relative to the positive and/or neu-
tral words in tasks with response to the color of the
stimulus.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Experiment I
Material and Method
Participants
Twenty-six university students (19 female) of mean age
20.12 years (SD = 2.48) participated as volunteers in the
study. All had normal or corrected-to-normal vision (but
not contact lenses). All were healthy, with no history of
neurological or psychiatric disorders or drug abuse and
were not taking any medication at the time of participating
in the study. The participants were also required to abstain
from drugs, alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine prior to testing,
and none reported fatigue caused by lack of sleep. All par-
ticipants gave their informed consent prior to taking part in
the study. Twenty-four participants were self-reported
right-handed and two were left-handed.
Procedure
The participants took part in a single experimental session
divided in three parts, with brief rest periods between each.
In the first part of the session, 60 colored nonwords (con-
sisting of four letters ‘‘x’’ -xxxx-, with 20 stimuli for each
of three colors: red, green, or blue) were presented. These
nonword stimuli were presented first and separately from
the other stimuli to ensure that they were processed only
as chromatic stimuli and were not influenced by semantic
expectations (in most studies involving the Stroop task, a
chain of letters ‘‘x’’ is the nonword stimulus most com-
monly used and is presented first). In the second part, 60
congruent color words were presented (20 examples of
the word rojo [red] printed in red, 20 of the word verde
[green] printed in green, and 20 of the word azul [blue]
printed in blue), mixed with another 60 incongruent color
words (20 examples of the word rojo [red] printed in green
or blue, 20 of the word verde [green] printed in red or blue,
and 20 of the word azul [blue] printed in red or green).
More than three consecutive words belonging to the same
category (congruent or incongruent) were never shown in
this part of the task. Congruent and incongruent color words
Hogrefe Publishing
151
were also mixed to prevent a reading strategy in the former,
to ensure that the subject responded to the color of the
printed words. In the third part, colored words with positive
emotional valence (e.g., the word tesoro [treasure] printed
in blue), negative emotional valence (e.g., the word veneno
[poison] printed in blue), and neutral valence (e.g., the word
repisa [ledge] printed in blue), were presented in three sep-
arate blocks to avoid a carry-over effect: participants take
longer to respond to stimuli that are preceded by stimuli
with negative valence (McKenna & Sharma, 2004; Waters,
Sayette, Franken, & Schwartz, 2005). Each block included
60 stimuli (20 of each color). The three blocks of colored
words (positive, negative, and neutral) were counterbal-
anced among participants. In all three parts of the session
(involving presentation of nonwords, congruent/incongru-
ent color words, and positive/negative/neutral colored
words), the order of presentation of the stimuli was
pseudorandom, so that more than three consecutive stimuli
of the same color were never shown.
The participants were asked to press a different button
of a response box, depending on the color of the stimulus
(red, blue, or green), with the fingers (index, middle, and
ring) of their dominant hand, as quickly and accurately as
possible; participants were also asked to ignore the meaning
of any words presented. The electroencephalographic
(EEG) activity, reaction times (RTs), and the number of
errors were recorded throughout the session.
In order to ensure that the participants understood the
instructions and responded correctly, and to familiarize
them with the task, a training block of 30 colored nonword
stimuli was presented before the first part of the experimen-
tal session; the behavioral data and electroencephalographic
data for these 30 stimuli were not recorded.
We presented the colored nonword stimuli first, fol-
lowed by the congruent/incongruent color words and finally
the colored words with emotional valence, because it has
been found that in the task of responding to the color, the
RT to incongruent stimuli decreases with practice, due to
less interference from the semantic processing of the word
(Davidson, Zacks, & Williams, 2003; Dulaney & Rogers,
1992; Edwards, Brice, Craig, & Penri-Jones, 1996; Fein-
stein, Brown, & Ron, 1994; MacLeod, 1998; Stroop,
1935). Thus, the order of presentation would interfere with
the objectives of the present study. Rest intervals were pro-
gramed between each of the three parts of the session with
the aim of avoiding any possible effects of repetition of the
stimuli on the amplitude of P3b, as in oddball tasks of long
duration the amplitude of P3b tends to decrease throughout
the session, but brief periods of rest between blocks have
been shown to enable maintenance of the values of the
amplitude of P3b at initial levels (Lindn, Zurrn, & Daz,
2004).
The stimuli were designed with the Stim system (ver-
sion 3.0.15) from Neuroscan. The images were presented
on a 1900 screen placed at a distance of 1 m from the partic-
ipants. The words were presented in the center of the
screen, with lowercase Rom 1 letter style available in the
Stim software (e.g., the ‘‘x’’ letter was 2.5 cm high and
2.4 cm wide). The background of the screen was always
black, even during the interval between stimuli. Each
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
 152 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
stimulus was displayed for 250 ms, with an interstimuli
interval (ISI) of 2,500 ms.
The positive, negative, and neutral words (see
Appendix) were selected from the version of the Affective
Norms for English Words (ANEW; Bradley & Lang, 1999)
adapted for the Spanish population (Redondo, Fraga,
ComesaÇa, & Padrn, 2007). Three lists of 30 different
words were elaborated for each category (each list was pre-
sented twice to produce the 60 stimuli corresponding to the
three types of color words). The words selected are nouns,
verbs, and adjectives between four and six letters long, and
all are common words in Spanish (the frequency and famil-
iarity values were obtained from the LEXESP-CORCO
database; Sebastin-Galls, Mart, Cuetos, & Carreiras,
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
2000). According to the data provided by Redondo et al.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
(2007), the words with positive and negative emotional
valence had a high arousal value (positive: mean = 6.6;
negative: mean = 6.8), a mean emotional valence of 7.4
for positive words and of 1.9 for negative words. The neu-
tral words elicited little arousal (mean = 4.3) and interme-
diate valence (mean = 4.9), indicating that they lack
emotional content. The colors were assigned at random to
words with positive, negative, and neutral valence.
EEG Recordings
The participants were seated in a comfortable chair in an elec-
trically shielded laboratory with attenuated sound and light-
ing levels, and they were instructed not to move during the
recording sessions and to look at the center of the screen.
Each participant was fitted with a cap with nose reference
and frontopolar ground, to record the EEG activity at 30 elec-
trode sites corresponding to the 10–20 system (with the Neu-
roScan 4.1 EEG recording system). Eye movements were
recorded simultaneously by additional electrodes placed
above and below the left eye (VEOG) and at the outer canthus
of each eye (HEOG). All impedances were reduced to 5 kX
or less to obtain good quality recordings, and care was taken
to avoid damaging the subject’s scalp.
The EEG signals were passed through a 0.1–30 Hz
band-pass filter and amplified at 500 K, and the digitalized
signal was stored. Pre-stimulus (200 ms) and post-stimulus
(1,400 ms) segments were extracted from the EEG and the
pre-stimulus interval was defined as the baseline.
Signals exceeding €100 lV were automatically
excluded from the averages and only the epochs corre-
sponding to the stimuli with correct responses were taken
into account. Ocular artifacts were corrected separately by
an off-line analysis with the algorithm of Gratton, Coles,
and Donchin (1983). The ERP waveforms of participants
were obtained by averaging 50–55 epochs for each type
of stimulus (average epochs for each stimulus: Xs = 53.1;
congruent = 51.8; incongruent = 51.0; positive = 54.3;
negative = 52.5; neutral = 51.4). There were no differences
in the number of averaged epochs between the different
types of stimuli. Eight of the twenty-six participants were
excluded from the study because of an insufficient number
of epochs, and therefore the final ERP sample comprised 18
participants.
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
Identification of the ERP Components
The ERP data were analyzed by tPCA to ensure correct
identification of the ERP components. Temporal PCA pro-
vides a statistical decomposition of the brain electrical pat-
terns superimposed on the scalp-recorded data (Dien &
Frishkoff, 2004). The waveforms obtained in response to
the six types of stimuli (Figure 1) were inspected visually
and found to be similar. A covariance-matrix-based tPCA
was then used for the six conditions. The decision regarding
selection of the numbers of components (or factors) was
based on the scree test (Cattel, 1966). Extracted factors
were then subjected to Promax rotation. Dien (1998)
showed that the use of Promax rotation improves the accu-
racy of the results and reduces problems such as misalloca-
tion of variance (see also Dien & Frishkoff, 2004).
Temporal PCA provides two matrices: one for factor load-
ings and another for factor scores. The first shows the load-
ing of each factor over time, and the second provides
information about the extent to which each factor is present
in the averaged ERPs (i.e., at each electrode site). The fac-
tor scores are transformed values of the original voltages
and can therefore be used as a measure of the amplitude.
A positive factor score indicates a voltage higher than
0 lV, so that the higher the score, the larger the amplitude;
a negative factor score indicates a negative voltage.
The tPCA identified six temporal factors (TF), which
explain 87.43% of the total variance (Figure 2). Taking into
account the temporal range of the factor loadings and
the factor scores at the different electrodes, TF 3, 4, 5,
and 6 corresponded to ERP components, whereas TF 1
and 2 (with temporal range of the factor loadings above
700 ms) did not correspond to any identifiable component
in the ERP waveforms and were not taken into account
in the subsequent analysis. TF 3, 4, 5, and 6 corresponded
to ERP components as follows: TF6 corresponded to the
frontal P150/occipital N170 complex, which is character-
ized as a positive wave with maximum amplitude at frontal
electrodes and a negative wave at occipital electrodes, with
peak latencies within the 120–190 ms window (Joyce &
Rossion, 2005 demonstrated that both waves comprised a
single component); TF5 corresponded to the negative ante-
rior N2 component, clearly identifiable at fronto-central
electrodes with maximum amplitude at Fz and peak latency
within 230–300 ms; TF4 corresponded to the positive pari-
etal P3b (P300 or P3) component within 300 and 450 ms;
and finally, TF3 corresponded to the centro-parietal Posi-
tive Slow Wave (PSW), with maximum amplitude at Pz
and peak latency within 450–580 ms following P3b.
Statistical Analysis
Color-Word Stroop
Repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVAs), in
which the stimuli were considered as the within-subject fac-
tor (colored nonwords, congruent color words, and incon-
gruent color words), was used to compare the RT and the
number of errors.
Hogrefe Publishing
 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Figure 1. ERP waveforms elicited by nonwords (pink),
congruent color words (black), incongruent color words
(red), and colored words with positive (green), negative
(blue), and neutral (brown) valence in Experiment I.
x-Axis: time in ms; y-axis: microvolts. Waveforms (up to
down): Fz, Cz, Pz, and Oz
The temporal factor scores were examined by ANOVAs
with two within-subject factors: stimulus (with three levels)
and electrode (with three levels: Fz, Cz, and Pz, for the
Hogrefe Publishing
153
Figure 2. Temporal Factor (TF) loadings from the
temporal Principal Components Analysis of the ERP data
from Experiment I.
anterior N2, P3b, and PSW, or four levels: Fz, Cz, Pz,
and Oz, for the P150/N170 complex).
The peak latencies of the ERP components were mea-
sured manually at the electrode with the largest amplitude
(frontal P150 at Fz, occipital N170 at Oz, P3b at Pz, ante-
rior N2 at Fz, and PSW at Pz) in the latency ranges indi-
cated in the previous section, ‘‘Identification of the ERP
components.’’ The peak latencies were analyzed by
repeated measures ANOVAs, with one within-subject fac-
tor: stimulus (with three levels).
Emotional Stroop
The behavioral data were analyzed by repeated measures
ANOVAs with four levels of the stimulus factor (nonwords
and colored words with positive, negative, and neutral
valence), for reaction time and number of errors.
The temporal factor scores were subjected to repeated
measures ANOVAs with two within-subject factors: stimulus
(four levels: nonwords and colored words with positive, neg-
ative, and neutral valence) and electrode (with three or four
levels); the peak latencies of the ERP components were exam-
ined by ANOVAS with four levels of the stimulus factor.
When the ANOVA revealed significant differences,
pairwise comparison of means was carried out to identify
the source of the differences (Bonferroni’s correction was
applied). Greenhouse-Geisser corrections were applied to
the degrees of freedom in all cases in which the condition
of sphericity was not met. In these cases, the original
degrees of freedom are shown together with the correct p
and epsilon (e) values. Differences were considered signif-
icant at p  .05. All statistical analyses were carried out
with SPSS (version 15.0)
Results
Color-Word Stroop
Behavioral data (see Table 1). As expected, the RTs to the
different stimuli differed significantly, F(2, 48) = 36.2,
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
 154 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop

Table 1. Mean (and standard deviation) reaction times (ms) and number of errors corresponding to the following types of
stimuli: colored nonwords (XXXX), congruent color words, incongruent color words, colored words with
positive, negative, and neutral emotional valence in Experiment I
Nonwords Congruent Incongruent Positive Negative Neutral
Reaction time 499 (83) 551 (107) 621 (132) 560 (102) 549 (99) 542 (114)
Number of errors 2.6 (2.5) 1.9 (1.65) 3.7 (2.9) 1.6 (2.0) 3.7 (1.7) 2.1 (2.1)

p < .001, e = 0.678; specifically, the RTs were signifi- scores were significantly larger at the Fz electrode than at
cantly longer in response to incongruent color words than the Cz, Pz, and Oz electrodes, and larger at the Cz and
in response to congruent color words and nonwords, and Pz electrodes than at the Oz electrode.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

they were significantly longer to congruent than to nonword The TF5 scores (anterior N2) did not differ significantly
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

stimuli (p < .001 for all paired comparisons).
The number of errors also differed significantly,
F(2, 50) = 10.1, p < .001; specifically, significantly more
errors were obtained in response to the incongruent color
words than in response to the congruent (p < .001) and to
the nonword stimuli (p < .01).
Therefore, the incongruent color words generated inter-
ference in the response to the color of the stimuli.
Event-Related Potential data (see Table 2 and Figures
1, 3–5). The TF6 scores (frontal P150/occipital N170) were
significantly larger for the congruent color word stimuli
than for the incongruent color word and for the nonword
stimuli. There were no significant differences between the
scores for incongruent stimuli and the nonwords. The
for the different stimuli or electrodes, and it there wasn’t
interaction effect.
The TF4 scores (P3b) were significantly larger for the
congruent and nonword stimuli than for the incongruent stim-
uli, and were significantly larger at the Pz electrode than at
the Cz and Fz electrodes, and larger at Cz than at Fz. Given
that the P3b amplitude to the incongruent words was signifi-
cantly different than to congruent words and nonwords, it
appears that the P3b amplitude was sensitive to interference
from incongruent color words in the response to color.
The TF3 scores (PSW) were significantly larger for
nonwords than for congruent and incongruent stimuli, and
they were significantly larger at the Pz electrode than at
Cz and Fz electrodes, and larger at Cz than at Fz.

Table 2. F values for the repeated measures ANOVAs for the scores of TF6 (P150/N170), TF5 (anterior N2), TF4 (P3b),
and TF3 (PSW) obtained for: congruent (C) and incongruent (I) color words, and colored nonwords (X)
Factor F (df) Paired comparison
TF6 (P150/N170) Stimulus 5.1 (2, 34)* e = 0.743 C > I***
C > X*
Electrode 19.3 (3, 51)*** e = 0.6 Fz > Cz**
Fz > Pz*
Fz > Oz***
Cz, Pz > Oz***
Interaction 3.4 (6, 102)* e = 0.4 Fz: C > I*
Cz: C > I**
Pz: C > I**
Oz: C > I, X***
TF5 (anterior N2) Stimulus 1.1 (2, 34)
Electrode 2.9 (2, 34) e = 0.6
Interaction 1.3 (4, 68) e = 0.7
TF4 (P3b) Stimulus 6.2 (2, 34)* e = 0.7 C, X > I**
Electrode 63.7 (2, 34)*** Pz > Cz, Fz***
Cz > Fz***
Interaction 1.1 (4, 68) e = 0.6
TF3 (PSW) Stimulus 4.0 (2, 34)* X > C, I*
Electrode 28.4 (2, 34)*** e = 0.7 Pz > Cz, Fz***
Cz > Fz***
Interaction 2.4 (4, 68)
Notes. The degrees of freedom (df) are shown in parentheses. e = epsilon value. *p  .05. **p  .01. ***p  .001.

Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164 Hogrefe Publishing

 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop 155

Table 3. F values for the repeated measures ANOVAs for the scores of TF6 (P150/N170), TF5 (anterior N2), TF4 (P3b),
and TF3 (PSW) obtained for: words with positive (P), negative (Ng), and neutral (N) emotional valence, and
colored nonwords (X)
Factor F (df) Paired comparison
TF6 Stimulus 0.2 (3, 51)
(P150/N170) Electrode 16.0 (3, 51)*** e = 0.5 Fz > Cz**
Fz > Oz***
Cz > Oz**
Pz > Oz***
Interaction 3.2 (9, 153)** e = 0.5 Not significant
TF5 Stimulus 1.2 (3, 51)
(anterior N2) Electrode 2.2 (2, 34) e = 0.6
Interaction 2.1 (6, 102) e = 0.6
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

TF4 Stimulus 14.5 (3, 51)*** X > P, Ng, N***

(P3b) Electrode 44.6 (2, 34)*** Pz > Cz**
Pz > Fz***
Cz > Fz**
Interaction 7.7 (6, 102)*** Fz: X > P **; X > Ng*; X > N***
Cz: X > P, Ng, N***
Pz: X > P, Ng, N***
TF3 Stimulus 1.4 (3, 51)
(PSW) Electrode 28.7 (2, 34)*** Pz > Fz, Cz**
Cz > Fz***
Interaction 0.2 (6, 102) e = 0.6
Notes. The degrees of freedom (df) are shown in parentheses. e = epsilon value. *p  .05. **p  .01. ***p  .001.

Finally, no significant differences were observed
between stimuli in relation to the peak latency of the com-
ponents studied.
Emotional Stroop
Behavioral data (see Table 1). The stimulus factor had a
significant effect on the RTs, F(3, 72) = 10.3, p < .001,
e = 0.649: the participants’ RTs were significantly longer
in response to stimuli with positive (p < .01), negative
(p < .01), and neutral valence (p < .05) than in response
to nonwords, as expected. Therefore, the positive, negative,
and neutral words generated interference in the response to
color.
There were also significant differences in the number of
errors between stimuli, F(3, 72) = 8.9; p < .001: signifi-
cantly more errors were produced in response to stimuli
with negative emotional valence than in response to those
with positive and neutral valence (p < .001 for both pairs
of comparisons). Thus, the number of errors was sensitive
to the negative relative to the positive and neutral content
in the color-response task.
Event-related potentials (see Table 3, and Figures 1, 3,
and 5). The TF6 scores (frontal P150/occipital N170) were
significantly larger at the Fz electrode than at Cz and Oz,
and larger at the Cz and Pz electrodes than at Oz.
The TF5 scores (anterior N2) did not differ significantly
for the different stimuli or electrodes, and it there wasn’t
interaction effect.
The TF4 scores (P3b) were significantly larger for non-
words than for colored words with positive, negative, and
neutral valence, and were significantly larger at Pz than
at Cz and Fz, and at Cz than at Fz. Thus, P3b was sensitive
to interference from positive, negative, and neutral words in
the color-response task. By contrast, there were no signifi-
cant differences between the scores for the three types of
colored words with valence (positive, negative, and
neutral).
The TF3 scores (PSW) were significantly larger at the
Pz electrode than at Cz and Fz, and larger at Cz than at Fz.
No significant differences were observed in relation to
the peak latencies of the components studied.
Spatial PCA on TF4
Given that TF4 (P3b) was sensitive to interference from the
incongruent color words and to interference from the posi-
tive, negative, and neutral colored words, a spatial PCA
(sPCA) was carried out for TF4, because ERPs often differ
topographically in relation to the experimental conditions.
The sPCA provides a reliable division of the scalp into
different recording regions, and each region or Spatial Fac-
tor (SF) is formed with the scalp points where recordings
tend to covary. Also in this case, selection of the number
of SFs was based on the scree test, and extracted factors
were submitted to promax rotation. Each SF can be quanti-
fied through the spatial factor score, a single parameter that
reflects the amplitude of the whole spatial factor. The sPCA

Hogrefe Publishing Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164

 156 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Figure 3. Voltage maps for each of the ERP components in each task condition in Experiment I.

extracted four SFs that explained 90% of the variance. The
SF1 was parietal, the SF2 frontal, the SF3 central, and SF4
left frontal-temporal.
In accordance with previous results, in the color-word
Stroop, the factor scores for four SFs of the TF4 differed
significantly in relation to type of stimulus (SF1:
F(2, 34) = 5.46, p < .05, e = 0.74; SF2: F(2, 34) = 3.5,
p < .05; SF3: F(2, 34) = 4, p < .05; SF4: F(2, 34) =
8.53, p < .01, e = 0.67). The pairwise comparisons showed
that the scores were significantly higher for nonwords than

Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164 Hogrefe Publishing

 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Figure 4. Mean scores for TF6 at Fz (P150) and Oz
(N170) for nonword stimuli (XS), congruent color word
stimuli (CS), and incongruent color word stimuli (IS) in
Experiment I.
for the incongruent stimuli (p < .05 in all four SF), and they
were also significantly higher for the congruent than for the
incongruent stimuli (p < .05 in SF4).
As expected, in the emotional Stroop, the four SFs of
the TF4 also differed significantly with respect to the type
of stimulus (SF1: F(3, 51) = 6.6, p < .01, e = 0.33; SF2:
F(3, 51) = 9.5, p < .001; SF3: F(3, 51) = 11.2, p < .001;
SF4: F(3, 51) = 10.84, p < .001). Specifically, in the four
SFs, the factor scores were significantly higher for the non-
words than for the positive, negative, and neutral colored
words (p < .05 for all paired comparisons). No significant
differences were found between the positive, negative,
and neutral words in any of the four spatial factors of
TF4.
Comparison of the TF4 (P3b) Scores Obtained for the
Positive/Negative/Neutral Colored Words With the
Scores Obtained for the Congruent and Incongruent
Color Words (Figure 5)
Given that the TF4 scores did not differ significantly for the
positive, negative, and neutral color words, the mean values
for the three types of color words were calculated at Pz, and
these mean values were compared with the values for con-
gruent and incongruent color words, by paired t tests: the
TF4 scores (P3b) for the positive, negative, and neutral col-
ored words were significantly smaller than for congruent
color words (t(17) = 5.23, p < .001) and for incongruent
color words (t(17) = 3.87, p < .01).
Experiment II
A second experiment was carried out to confirm that the
amplitude of the P300 (P3b) component was smaller in
response to colored words with positive, negative, and
Hogrefe Publishing
157
Figure 5. Mean scores for TF4 (P3b) at Pz for the
nonword stimuli (XS), congruent color word stimuli (CS),
incongruent color word stimuli (IS), and colored word
stimuli with emotional valence (EVS; positive, negative,
and neutral) in Experiment I.
neutral valence than in response to incongruent and congru-
ent color words, so that the differences observed in the first
experiment could not be attributed to the order of presenta-
tion of the stimuli.
Material and Method
Participants
Sixteen university students of mean age 20.9 years
(SD = 3.83) participated as volunteers in the study. The
new participants met the same criteria as described for
the first experiment.
Procedure
Two blocks of 150 stimuli were presented (30 congruent
color words, 30 incongruent color words, 30 colored words
with positive emotional valence, 30 colored words with
negative emotional valence, and 30 neutral color words).
The order of presentation of the stimuli was pseudorandom,
as stimuli of the same color or of the same type (incongru-
ent, congruent, positive, negative, and neutral) never
appeared more than three times in succession. The charac-
teristics of the stimuli were the same as in the first experi-
ment, and the participants were also required to respond to
the color of the stimuli.
As in the previous experiments, 30 practice stimuli (col-
ored ‘‘xxxx’’) were presented before the blocks of test stim-
uli to familiarize the participants with the task.
EEG Recordings
The recording characteristics were the same as in the first
experiment.
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
 158 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Figure 6. ERP waveforms at Pz elicited by congruent
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
color words (black), incongruent color words (red), and
colored words with positive (green), negative (blue), and
neutral (brown) valence in Experiment II. x-Axis: time in
ms; y-axis: microvolts.
Identification of the ERP Components
Only the peak amplitude of P3b at the Pz electrode site was
measured in this experiment. The component was identified
between 300 and 450 ms post-stimulus.
Statistical Analysis
The P3b amplitude was examined by repeated measures
ANOVAs with the stimulus as the within-subject factor
(congruent color words, incongruent color words, and posi-
tive, negative, and neutral colored words).
Results
The results of Experiment II (see Figure 6) were consistent
with those of Experiment I. The stimulus factor had a sig-
nificant effect on the P3b amplitude, F(4, 60) = 9.6;
p < .001, e = 0.516: the amplitude was significantly larger
for congruent and incongruent color words than for colored
words with positive, negative, and neutral valence (p < .01,
for each pair of comparisons), and there were no significant
differences between the amplitudes for the three types of
colored words with emotional valence.
Discussion
Behavioral Data: Color-Word and Emotional
Stroop
In the color-word Stroop, the reaction times were signifi-
cantly longer in response to incongruent color words than
in response to nonwords and congruent color words.
Furthermore, the participants made more errors in response
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
to the incongruent color word stimuli than in response to
the nonwords and the congruent color words. In the emo-
tional Stroop, the reaction times to positive, negative, and
neutral stimuli were significantly longer than the reaction
times to nonwords. The incongruent words and the positive,
negative, and neutral words interfered in the behavioral
response to color.
No facilitation effects were observed. The facilitation
effect, which occurs when the two dimensions of a color
word stimulus coincide and are therefore easier to process,
consists of shorter reaction times to congruent color words
than to colored stimuli (nonwords). The facilitation effect is
less robust than the interference effect and depends on sev-
eral variables. In this respect, MacLeod (1991) reported the
repercussions of presenting congruent and incongruent
color words in the same block or in different blocks. When
congruent color words are presented alone in one block, the
participants may adopt a strategy of reading the words,
which decreases the reaction times in response to these
stimuli, thus favoring facilitation. In the present study, the
congruent and incongruent color words were presented
pseudorandomly in the same block, with the same probabil-
ity of appearance. This precluded a reading strategy, as
attention was divided between the two dimensions of the
stimuli: color and meaning of the words (MacLeod,
1991), and explains the absence of a facilitation effect
and the longer reaction time in response to congruent stim-
uli than in response to nonwords.
There were no differences in the reaction times to the
three types of stimuli with valence: positive, negative, and
neutral. A longer RT to color words with negative valence
than for color words with neutral valence is characteristic
of subjects with different clinical disorders and of highly
anxious, but otherwise healthy, individuals (see Bair-
Haim, Lami, Pergamin, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van
IJzendoorn, 2007), but is not commonly observed in healthy
subjects with low or intermediate levels of anxiety (Phaf &
Kan, 2007). Sharma and McKenna (2001) indicated that
when the number of stimuli per time unit increases, negative
aspects of the stimulus have been found to receive greater
weighting. Thus, it is possible that in healthy participants,
the interval between stimuli is important for finding differ-
ences in RT to color words with different emotional valence.
In this respect, reaction times to stimuli with negative emo-
tional valence were longer than in response to stimuli with
neutral valence with an ISI between approximately 1,000
and 1,150 ms (Gootjes et al., 2011), and with an ISI of
approximately 900 ms (40 ms between the response and pre-
sentation of the next stimulus, van Hooff et al., 2008),
although this was not observed when the ISI were longer,
approximately 1,300 ms (van Hooff et al., 2008, 500 ms
between the response and the following stimulus). In tasks
in which ISIs > 1,300 ms were used (i.e., Frhholz et al.,
2011, with an ISI of 1,500 ms, McNeely et al., 2008, with
an ISI of 3,000 ms, Sass et al., 2010, with an ISI of
2,000 € 225 ms, and in the present study, with an ISI of
2,500 ms), the emotional valence was not observed to have
any effect on the RT.
More errors were produced in response to colored words
with negative valence than in response to those with
Hogrefe Publishing
 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
positive and neutral valence, and therefore this variable was
found to be more sensitive to the negative emotional con-
tent than the RT, which is the measure traditionally used
in studies involving the emotional Stroop task. The results
for the number of errors appear to indicate that words with
negative emotional valence are processed differently than
positive and neutral words.
ERP Data: Color-Word Stroop and Emotional
Stroop
In the color-word Stroop, the P3b amplitude was signifi-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
cantly smaller for incongruent stimuli than for congruent
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
and nonword stimuli. Moreover, the P3b amplitude was sig-
nificantly smaller for positive, negative, and neutral colored
words than for nonwords. The P3b amplitude for positive,
negative, and neutral colored words was significantly smal-
ler than that for incongruent and congruent color words,
and there were no differences in the amplitude between
the three types of stimuli with valence (positive, negative,
and neutral). Thus, the temporal locus of the semantic con-
flict in both the incongruent color word and positive/nega-
tive/neutral color word may be within the P300 latency
range.
Following the temporal order of the ERP components,
significant differences were observed in the P150/N170
complex between congruent and incongruent stimuli, and
between congruent stimuli and nonword stimuli. However,
no differences were observed between the incongruent and
nonword stimuli; therefore, the P150/N170 complex is not
associated with interference from incongruent color words,
and it appears that this complex may be sensitive to the
semantic equivalence of both dimensions of the congruent
stimulus. This interpretation is consistent with studies that
associate N170 with the lexical-semantic processing of
visually presented words (Hauk, Davis, Ford, Pulvermller,
& Marslen-Wilson, 2006; Hauk & Pulvermller, 2004;
Sereno & Rayner, 2003; Sereno, Rayner, & Posner, 1998).
In the emotional Stroop, no differences in the P150/
N170 complex were observed between the different types
of stimuli, which supports the above-mentioned interpreta-
tion as in the emotional Stroop no stimuli in which both
dimensions were semantically equivalent were presented.
Furthermore, McNeely et al. (2008) did not observe any
differences in the amplitude of the posterior N170 compo-
nent between colored words with positive, negative, and
neutral valence, and Frhholz et al. (2011) did not find
any difference in N170 between colored words with nega-
tive and neutral valence.
In the present study, for both the color-word Stroop and
the emotional Stroop, no significant differences were
observed in the amplitude of the anterior N2 component
(corresponding to TF5) for the different stimuli, which is
consistent with the findings of West et al. (2005) and
Thomas et al. (2007). The anterior N2 component (fron-
to-central negative component at around 200–300 ms)
was previously identified in the numerical Stroop (West,
Bowry, & McConville, 2004), in the color-word Stroop
Hogrefe Publishing
159
(Ciesielski et al., 2011; Silton et al., 2010; West et al.,
2005), and in the emotional Stroop (Stewart et al., 2010;
Thomas et al., 2007).
The Stroop task is a cognitive control task, and in these
tasks the anterior N2 amplitude has been associated with
the conflict between responses, that is, the conflict between
different representations of responses to a stimulus
(Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 2001; Folstein
& van Petten, 2008; Van Veen & Carter, 2002). In the
color-word Stroop, the incongruent stimuli generated con-
flict between responses, but the anterior N2 was not sensi-
tive to the conflict between responses. This is possibly
because, unlike in other cognitive control tasks, the conflict
between responses in the color-word Stroop task is poster-
ior to the semantic conflict (two representations of different
responses can only be generated if there is a semantic con-
flict stage). As the semantic conflict is associated with
P300, the conflict between responses in the color-word
Stroop must be posterior to P300 and therefore to N2. In
the case of the emotional Stroop, there were no differences
in amplitude between stimuli because the positive, nega-
tive, and neutral colored words did not generate any con-
flict between responses.
The component corresponding to TF4 is P3b (P300 or
P3), as shown by the parietal distribution, positive polarity,
morphology, and latency between 300 and 450 ms. The
component identified in the ERP waveforms elicited by
the color word stimuli between 300 and 450 ms post-
stimulus is P3b.
In the color-word Stroop used in the present study, the
amplitude of the P3b component was smaller for incongru-
ent color-word stimuli than for congruent and nonword
stimuli, as also found in previous studies (Houston, Bauer,
& Hesselbrock, 2004; Ilan & Polich, 1999; Mager et al.,
2007; Potter et al., 2002; West & Alain, 2000b; West
et al., 2005; Zurrn et al., 2009). Furthermore, the P3b
amplitude for the colored words with positive, negative,
and neutral valence was also smaller than for the nonwords.
Thus, the amplitude of P3b was sensitive to interference
that incongruent words and positive/negative/neutral words
generate in response to color.
The amplitude of the P3b for positive, negative, and neu-
tral colored words was smaller than for incongruent color
words and congruent color words. In addition, there was a
gradation from larger to smaller amplitude of the P3b compo-
nent to the three types of color words: congruent, incongru-
ent, and words with valence (positive, negative, and
neutral). The P300 amplitude decreases in double tasks
(Isreal, Wickens, Chesney, & Donchin, 1980; Kramer, Sire-
vaag, & Braune, 1987; Sirevaag, Kramer, Coles, & Donchin,
1989; Wickens, Kramer, Vanasse, & Donchin, 1983), and
therefore the gradation from larger to smaller amplitude
observed in the present study may be related to the processing
demands of the secondary task generated in the color-
response version of the Stroop task. In this type of Stroop
task, the participants carried out the target task, to respond
to the color of the printed word, and a second task, to read
the word. The target task was the same for congruent and
incongruent color words and for positive, negative, and
neutral colored words. However, the second task generates
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
 160 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
a semantic conflict that is very different for congruent and
incongruent words and words with valence (positive, nega-
tive, and neutral).
Congruent words do not generate conflict, as the seman-
tic codes that are activated (one by the word and the other
by the color) are the same. Incongruent stimuli and those
with positive, negative, and neutral valence both generate
a semantic conflict, and whereas for the incongruent stimuli
the participants had to access two different semantic codes
belonging to the same semantic category (color indicated
by the word and the color in which the word was printed),
for positive, negative, and neutral colored words they had to
access two semantic codes belonging to different categories
(meaning of the word and meaning of the color in which it
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
was printed). Moreover, the meanings of the words with
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
positive, negative, and neutral valence were very diverse,
as 30 different words of each type were included. Thus,
the semantic processing load of the words with positive,
negative, and neutral valence appears greater than the
semantic processing load of the incongruent color words.
This explanation might also be extended to the nonword
stimuli: the amplitude of P3b elicited by nonwords was
the largest because the stimuli were only chromatic. Over-
all, these findings suggest that the temporal locus of the
semantic conflict (i.e., the stage at which are compared
the semantic code of the word and the semantic code of
the color in which it is printed) occurs in the P3b latency
range of 300–450 ms in the case of incongruent color
words and positive, negative, and neutral colored words.
It might be argued that the gradation in the P3b ampli-
tude (observed in Experiment I) is not the result of the
semantic conflict, but rather an effect of practice, as a result
of the order of presentation of the three parts of the exper-
imental session (presentation of nonword, congruent/incon-
gruent, and positive/negative/neutral words). In Experiment
II of the present study, the congruent and incongruent color
word stimuli and positive, negative, and neutral colored
words were presented within the same block, and the results
were similar to those obtained in Experiment I. Thus, the
data on the P3b amplitude obtained in Experiment I cannot
be attributed to practice or to the order of presentation of
the different blocks of stimuli.
We did not find any differences in the amplitude of P3b
among the three stimuli with valence positive, negative, and
neutral, as also reported by Sass et al. (2010). However,
Franken et al. (2009), Li et al. (2007), and Stewart et al.
(2010) observed differences between negative colored
words and neutral/positive colored words. Thomas et al.
(2007) observed differences in the amplitude of P300 for
colored words with negative valence and for neutral color
words, in a task involving identification of words with neg-
ative emotional valence, but in a task in which the partici-
pants had to indicate the color of the stimulus, the
differences between both types of color words decreased.
Kissler, Herbert, Winkler, and Junghofer (2009) reported
that in studies of visual word processing, the emotional
valence affected the amplitude of a positive component at
around 400–500 ms, which was denominated P3, P3b,
LPP, or LPC, and that this effect was robust when the sub-
jects directed their attention to the emotional content of the
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
word, but when they focused their attention on another attri-
bute of the word, the results were much more variable. In
the emotional Stroop, the attention of the subject is directed
toward the color of the stimulus, which may explain the
results of the present study.
In this study, the insensitivity of the ERP components to
the emotional content of the colored words contrasts with
the results obtained for the number of errors, which indicate
that the negative colored words may receive some type of
preferential processing with respect to positive and neutral
words. Preferential processing of negative words may be
confined to the ERP components related to the response
rather than those related to perception and evaluation of
the colored-word stimuli.
No differences in the latency of P3b were found in rela-
tion to the different stimuli, which is consistent with the
results of other studies (Atkinson, Drysdale, & Fulham
2003; Duncan-Jonhson & Kopell, 1980, 1981; Grapperon,
Vidal, & Leni, 1998; Ilan & Polich, 1999; Lavoie, 1999;
Rosenfeld & Skogsberg, 2006; Szcs & Soltsz, 2010;
West & Alain, 2000a; Zurrn et al., 2009). The latency
of P3b has traditionally been considered as an indicator
of the time required to evaluate the stimuli (Donchin,
1981; Kutas, McCarthy, & Donchin, 1977). Thus, it has
been reported that such results may indicate that the pro-
cesses related to stimulus evaluation do not intervene in
the inference effect (Atkinson et al., 2003; Duncan-Jonhson
& Kopell, 1981; Ilan & Polich, 1999; Lavoie, 1999; Rosen-
feld & Skogsberg, 2006). However, this interpretation does
not appear adequate as it is now considered that the P3b
latency may be an indicator of the time taken to evaluate
the stimuli in complex tasks but not in simple tasks (Pfef-
ferbaum, Christensen, Ford, & Kopell, 1986; Verleger,
1997; Verleger, Jaskowski, & Wascher, 2005), and the
Stroop task is characterized precisely by the stimuli being
of very different degrees of complexity (see Zurrn et al.,
2009).
As also reported by Mager et al. (2007) and Zurrn et al.
(2009), in the present study, a positive central-parietal com-
ponent, with a latency of around 500 ms, was observed
after P3b and was denominated PSW (corresponding to
TF3). This component is similar to the late positive compo-
nent identified in the classic study by Squires, Squires, and
Hillyard (1975), after P300 (P3b) and with maximum posi-
tive amplitude at Pz. Because of its polarity, scalp distribu-
tion, and approximate latency, this component appears to
be the same as that denominated Slow Potential (SP)
by West and colleagues (Markela-Lerenc et al., 2009;
McNeely et al., 2003; West, 2003, 2004; West & Alain,
1999, 2000a, 2000b; West et al., 2005) and believed to
be associated with response selection, and appears to be
the same as the LPP component identified by Franken
et al. (2009), Frhholz et al. (2011), and Gootjes et al.
(2011) in the emotional Stroop.
In the color-word Stroop, the amplitude of the PSW
component was larger for nonwords than for congruent
and incongruent color words, although there were no differ-
ences between the latter. This is consistent with the results
reported by Zurrn et al. (2009) for a congruence/incongru-
ence judgment task. In the emotional Stroop, no differences
Hogrefe Publishing
 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
between stimuli were observed. The PSW did not appear to
be modulated by semantic interference processes or by the
response selection processes, as was suggested by West
et al. (2005).
In summary, the behavioral data confirm that incongru-
ent color words and positive, negative, and neutral colored
words generate interference in response to the color. More-
over, the ERP data may indicate that the temporal locus of
the semantic conflict generated by the incongruent color
words and by the positive, negative, and neutral colored
words may be located in the latency range between 300
and 450 ms post stimulus, in relation to the P3b
component.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Acknowledgments
This work was financially supported by funds from the
Spanish Ministerio de Economa y Competitividad
(PSI2010-22224-C03-03), and from the Galician Govern-
ment: Consellera de Economa e Industria (10 PXIB
211070 PR), and Consellera de Educacin e Ordenacin
Universitaria (Axudas para a consolidacin e estruturacin
de unidades de investigacin competitivas do sistema uni-
versitario de Galicia. Modalidade: Grupos con potencial
de crecemento. Ref: CN 2012/033).
References
Atkinson, C. M., Drysdale, K. A., & Fulham, W. R. (2003).
Event-related potential to Stroop and reverse Stroop stimuli.
International Journal of Psychophysiology, 47, 1–21.
Bair-Haim, Y., Lami, D., Pergamin, L., Bakermans-Kranenburg,
M. J., & van IJzendoorn, M. H. (2007). Threat-related
attentional bias in anxious and nonanxious individuals: A
meta-analytic study. Psychological Bulletin, 133, 1–24.
Botvinick, M., Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., &
Cohen, J. D. (2001). Conflict monitoring and cognitive
control. Psychological Review, 108, 624–652.
Bradley, M., & Lang, P. J. (1999). Affective norms for English
words (ANEW): Instructions manual and affective ratings.
Gainesville, FL: Centre for Research in Psychophysiology
University of Florida.
Cattel, R. B. (1966). The scree test for the number of factors.
Behavioral Research, 1, 245–276.
Ciesielski, K. T., Rowland, L. M., Harris, R. J., Kerwin, A. A.,
Reeve, A., & Knight, J. E. (2011). Increase anterior brain
activation to correct response on high-conflict Stroop task in
obsessive-compulsive disorder. Clinical Neurophysiology,
122, 107–113.
Chen, A., Bailey, K., Tiernan, B. N., & West, R. (2011). Neural
correlates of stimulus and response interference in a 2-1
mapping stroop task. International Journal of Psychophys-
iology, 80, 129–138.
Cohen, J. D., Dunbar, K., & McClelland, J. L. (1990). On the
control of automatic processes: A parallel distributed
processing account of the Stroop effect. Psychological
Review, 97, 332–361.
Davidson, D. J., Zacks, R. T., & Williams, C. C. (2003). Stroop
interference, practice, and aging. Neuropsychology, Devel-
opmental, and Cognition. Section B, Aging Neuropsychology
and Cognition, 10, 85–98.
Hogrefe Publishing
161
De Houwer, J. (2003). On the role of stimulus-stimulus and
stimulus-response compatibility in the Stroop effect. Mem-
ory and Cognition, 31, 353–359.
Dien, J. (1998). Addressing misallocation of variance in
principal component analysis of event-related potentials.
Brain Topography, 11, 43–55.
Dien, J., & Frishkoff, G. A. (2004). Principal components
analysis of ERPs data. In T. C. Handy (Ed.), Event-related
potentials: A methods handbook (pp. 189–207). Cambridge,
UK: MIT Press.
Donchin, E. (1981). Surprise! . . . Surprise? Psychophysiology,
18, 493–513.
Dulaney, C. L., & Rogers, W. A. (1992). Mechanisms under-
lying reduction in Stroop interference with practice for
young and old adults. Journal of Experimental Psychology.
Learning, Memory and Cognition, 20, 470–484.
Duncan-Jonhson, C. C., & Kopell, B. S. (1980). The locus of
interference in the Stroop task: When you read ‘‘blue’’, do
you see ‘‘red’’? Psychophysiology, 17, 308–309.
Duncan-Jonhson, C. C., & Kopell, B. S. (1981). The Stroop
effect: Brain potentials localize the source of interference.
Science, 214, 938–940.
Dyer, F. N. (1973). The Stroop phenomenon and its use in the
study of perceptual, cognitive, and response processes.
Memory and Cognition, 1, 106–120.
Edwards, S., Brice, C., Craig, C., & Penri-Jones, R. (1996).
Effects of caffeine, practice, and mode of presentation on
Stroop task performance. Pharmacology, Biochemistry, and
Behavior, 54, 309–315.
Feinstein, A., Brown, R., & Ron, M. (1994). Effects of practice
of serial test of attention in healthy subjects. Journal of
Clinical Experimental Neuropsychology, 16, 436–447.
Folstein, J. R., & van Petten, C. (2008). Influence of cognitive
control and mismatch on the N2 component of the ERP: A
review. Psychophysiology, 45, 152–170.
Franken, I. H., Gootjes, L., & van Serien, J. W. (2009).
Automatic processing of emotional words during an emo-
tional Stroop task. Neuroreport, 20, 776–781.
Frhholz, S., Jellinghaus, A., & Herrmann, M. (2011). Time
course of implicit processing and explicit processing of
emotional faces and emotional words. Biological Psychol-
ogy, 87, 265–274.
Gootjes, L., Coppens, L. C., Zwaan, R. A., Franken, I. H. A., &
van Strien, J. W. (2011). Effects of recent word exposure on
emotion-word Stroop interference: An ERP study. Interna-
tional Journal of Psychophysiology, 79, 356–363.
Grapperon, J., Vidal, F., & Leni, P. (1998). The contribution of
cognitive evoked potentials to knowledge of mechanism on
the Stroop test. Clinical Neurophysiology, 28, 207–220.
Gratton, G., Coles, M. G., & Donchin, E. (1983). A new method
for off-line removal ocular artefact. Electroencephalography
and Clinical Neurophysiology, 55, 468–484.
Hauk, O., Davis, M. H., Ford, M., Pulvermller, F., & Marslen-
Wilson, W. D. (2006). The time course of visual word
recognition as revealed by linear regression analysis of ERP
data. Neuroimage, 30, 1383–1400.
Hauk, O., & Pulvermller, F. (2004). Effects of word length and
frequency on the human event-related potential. Clinical
Neurophysiology, 115, 1090–1103.
Houston, R. B., Bauer, L. O., & Hesselbrock, V. M. (2004).
Effects of borderline personality disorder features and a
family history of alcohol or drug dependence on P300 in
adolescents. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 53,
57–70.
Ilan, A. B., & Polich, J. (1999). P300 and response time from a
manual Stroop task. Clinical Neurophysiology, 110,
367–373.
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
 162 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
Isreal, J., Wickens, C., Chesney, G., & Donchin, E. (1980). The
event-related potentials as an index of display monitoring
workload. Human Factors, 22, 211–224.
Joyce, C., & Rossion, B. (2005). The face-sensitive N170 and
VPP components manifest the same brain processes: The
effect of reference electrode site. Clinical Neurophysiology,
116, 2613–2631.
Kissler, J., Herbert, C., Winkler, I., & Junghofer, M. (2009).
Emotion and attention in visual word processing – An ERP
study. Biological Psychology, 80, 75–83.
Kramer, A. F., Sirevaag, E. J., & Braune, R. (1987). A
psychophysiological assessment of operator workload dur-
ing simulated flight missions. Human Factors, 29, 145–160.
Kray, J., Eppinger, B., & Mecklinger, A. (2005). Age differ-
ences in attentional control. An event-related potential
approach. Psychophysiology, 42, 407–416.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Kutas, M., McCarthy, G., & Donchin, E. (1977). Augmenting
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
mental chronometry: The P300 as a measure of stimulus
evaluation time. Science, 197, 792–795.
Lavoie, M. E. (1999). Toward a functional explanation of the
locus of the Stroop Interference: A psychophysiological
study. Brain and Cognition, 40, 167–170.
Li, W., Zinbarg, R. E., & Paller, K. (2007). Trait anxiety
modulates supraliminal and subliminal threat: Brain poten-
tial evidence for early and late processing influences.
Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience, 7,
25–36.
Lindn, M., Zurrn, M., & Daz, F. (2004). Changes in P300
amplitude during an active standard auditory oddball task.
Biological Psychology, 66, 153–167.
Luo, C. R. (1999). Semantic competition as the basis of Stroop
interference: Evidence from color-word matching tasks.
Psychological Science, 10, 35–40.
MacLeod, C. M. (1991). Half a century of research on the
Stroop effect: An integrative review. Psychological Bulletin,
109, 163–203.
MacLeod, C. M. (1998). Training on integrated versus separated
Stroop task: The progression of interference and facilitation.
Memory and Cognition, 26, 201–211.
Mager, R., Bullinger, A. H., Brand, S., Schmidlin, M., Schrli, H.,
Mller-Spahn, F., . . . Falkenstein, M. (2007). Age-related
changes in cognitive conflict processing: And event-related
potential study. Neurobiology of Aging, 28, 1925–1935.
Markela-Lerenc, J., Schmidt-Kraepelin, C., Roesch-Ely, D.,
Mundt, C., Weisbrod, M., & Kaiser, S. (2009). Stroop
interference effect in schizophrenic patients: An electro-
physiological approach. International Journal of Psycho-
physiology, 71, 248–257.
McKenna, F. P., & Sharma, D. (2004). Reversing the emotional
Stroop effect reveals that it is not what it seems: The role of
fast and slow components. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 30,
382–392.
McNeely, H. E., Lau, M. A., Christensen, B. K., & Alain, C.
(2008). Neurophysiological evidence of cognitive inhibition
anomalies in persons with major depressive disorder.
Clinical Neurophysiology, 119, 1578–1589.
McNeely, H. E., West, R., Christensen, B. K., & Alain, C.
(2003). Neurophysiological evidence for disturbances of
conflict processing in patients with schizophrenia. Journal
of Abnormal Psychology, 112, 679–688.
Morton, J. (1969). Categories of interference: Verbal mediation
and conflict in card sorting. British Journal of Psychology,
60, 329–346.
Morton, J., & Chambers, S. M. (1973). Selective attention to
words and colours. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 25, 387–397.
Pfefferbaum, A., Christensen, C., Ford, J. M., & Kopell, B. S.
(1986). Apparent response incompatibility effects on P3
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
latency depend on the task. Electroencephalography and
Clinical Neurophysiology, 64, 424–437.
Phaf, R. H., & Kan, K. J. (2007). The automaticity of emotional
Stroop: A meta-analysis. Journal of Behavior Therapy and
Experimental Psychiatry, 38, 184–199.
Posner, M. I., & Snyder, C. R. (1975). Attention and cognitive
control. In R. L. Solso (Ed.), Information processing and
cognition (pp. 55–85). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Potter, D. D., Jory, S. H., Bassett, M. R. A., Barrett, K., &
Mychalkiw, W. (2002). Effect of mild head injury on event-
related potential correlates of Stroop task performance.
Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 8,
828–837.
Rebai, M., Bernard, C., & Lannou, J. (1997). The Stroop test
evokes a negative brain potential, the N400. International
Journal of Neuroscience, 91, 85–94.
Redondo, J., Fraga, I., ComesaÇa, M., & Padrn, L. (2007). The
Spanish adaptation of ANEW (affective norms for English
words). Behavior Research Methods, 39, 600–605.
Rosenfeld, J. P., & Skogsberg, K. R. (2006). P300-based Stroop
study with low probability and target Stroop oddballs: The
evidence still favours the response selection hypothesis.
International Journal of Psychophysiology, 60, 240–250.
Sass, S. M., Heller, W., Stewart, J. L., Silton, R. L., Edgar, J. C.,
Fisher, J. E., & Miller, G. A. (2010). Time course of
attentional bias in anxiety: Emotion and gender specificity.
Psychophysiology, 47, 247–259.
Sebastin-Galls, N., Mart, M. A., Cuetos, F., & Carreiras, M.
(2000). LEXESP: Lxico informatizado del espaÇol [LEXESP:
Lexicon of Computer Science in Spanish Language].
Barcelona, Spain: Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona.
Sereno, S. C., & Rayner, K. (2003). Measuring word recognition
in reading: Eye movements and event-related potentials.
Trends in Cognitive Science, 7, 489–493.
Sereno, S. C., Rayner, K., & Posner, M. I. (1998). Stablishing a
time-line of word recognition: Evidence from eye move-
ments and event-related potentials. Neuroreport, 9, 2195–
2200.
Seymour, P. H. (1977). Conceptual encoding and locus of the
Stroop effect. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology, 29, 245–265.
Sharma, D., & McKenna, F. P. (2001). The role of time pressure
on the emotional Stroop task. British Journal of Psychology,
92, 471–481.
Silton, R. L., Heller, W., Towers, D. N., Engels, A. S.,
Spielberg, J. M., Edgar, J. C., . . . Miller, G. A. (2010). The
time course of activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and
anterior cingulated cortex during top-down attentional
control. Neuroimage, 50, 1292–1302.
Sirevaag, E. J., Kramer, A. F., Coles, M. G. H., & Donchin, E.
(1989). Resource reciprocity: An event-related brain poten-
tial analysis. Acta Psychologica, 70, 77–97.
Squires, N. K., Squires, K., & Hillyard, S. A. (1975). Two
varieties of long-latency positive waves evoked by unpre-
dictable auditory stimuli in man. Electroencephalography
and Clinical Neurophysiology, 38, 387–401.
Stewart, J. L., Silton, R. L., Sass, S. M., Fisher, J. E., Edgar, J.
C., Heller, W., & Miller, G. A. (2010). Attentional bias to
negative emotion as a function of approach and withdrawal
anger styles: An ERP investigation. International Journal of
Psychophysiology, 76, 9–18.
Stroop, J. R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal
reactions. Experimental Psychology, 18, 643–662.
Szcs, D., & Soltsz, F. (2010). Stimulus and response conflict
in the color-word Stroop task: A combined electro-myog-
raphy and event-related potential study. Brain Research,
1325, 63–76.
Taake, I., Jaspers-Fayer, F., & Liotti, M. (2009). Early frontal
responses elicited by physical threat words in an emotional
Hogrefe Publishing
 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop
Stroop task: Modulation by anxiety sensitivity. Biological
Psychology, 81, 48–57.
Thomas, S. J., Johnstone, S. J., & Gonsalvez, C. J. (2007).
Event-related potentials during an emotional Stroop task.
International Journal of Psychophysiology, 63, 221–231.
van Hooff, J. C., Dietz, K., Sharma, D., & Bowman, H. (2008).
Neural correlates of intrusion of emotion words in a
modified Stroop task. International Journal of Psychophys-
iology, 67, 23–34.
Van Veen, V., & Carter, C. S. (2002). The timing of action-
monitoring processes in the anterior cingulated cortex.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 14, 593–602.
Van Veen, V., & Carter, C. S. (2005). Separating semantic
conflict and response conflict in the Stroop task: A
functional MRI study. Neuroimage, 27, 497–504.
Verleger, R. (1997). On the utility of P3 latency as an index of
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
mental chronometry. Psychophysiology, 34, 131–156.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Verleger, R., Jaskowski, P., & Wascher, E. (2005). Evidence for
an integrative role of P3b in linking reaction to perception.
Psychophysiology, 19, 165–181.
Waters, A. J., Sayette, M. A., Franken, I. H. A., & Schwartz, J.
E. (2005). Generalizability of carry-over effects in the
emotional Stroop task. Behaviour Research Therapy, 43,
715–732.
West, R. (2003). Neural correlates of cognitive control and
conflict detection in the Stroop and digit-location tasks.
Neuropsychologia, 41, 1122–1135.
West, R. (2004). The effects of aging on controlled attention and
conflict processing in the Stroop task. Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience, 16, 101–113.
West, R., & Alain, C. (1999). Event-related neural activity
associated with the Stroop task. Cognitive and Brain
Research, 8, 157–164.
West, R., & Alain, C. (2000a). Age-related decline in inhibitory
control contributes to the increased Stroop effect observed in
older adults. Psychophysiology, 37, 179–189.
Hogrefe Publishing
163
West, R., & Alain, C. (2000b). Effects of task context and
fluctuations of attention on neural activity supporting
performance of Stroop task. Brain Research, 873, 102–111.
West, R., Bowry, R., & McConville, C. (2004). Sensitivity of
medial frontal cortex to response and nonresponse conflict.
Psychophysiology, 41, 739–748.
West, R., Jakubek, K., Wymbs, N., Perry, M., & Moore, K.
(2005). Neural correlates of conflict processing. Experimen-
tal Brain Research, 167, 38–48.
Wickens, C., Kramer, A., Vanasse, L., & Donchin, E. (1983).
Performance of concurrent task: A psychophysiological
analysis of the reciprocity of information-processing
resources. Science, 221, 1080–1082.
Williams, J. M., Mathews, A., & MacLeod, C. (1996). The
emotional Stroop task and psychopathology. Psychological
Bulletin, 120, 3–24.
Zurrn, M., Pouso, M., Lindn, M., Galdo, S., & Daz, F. (2009).
Event-related potentials with the Stroop colour-word task:
Timing of semantic conflict. International Journal of
Psychophysiology, 72, 246–252.
Accepted for publication: May 28, 2013
Published online: November 14, 2013
Montserrat Zurrn
Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology
University of Santiago de Compostela
Campus Sur s/n
15782 Santiago de Compostela, Galicia
Spain
Tel. +34 981 563-100, ext. 13707
Fax +34 981 528-071
E-mail montserrat.zurron@usc.es
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164
 164 M. Zurrn et al.: ERPs in the Color-Word and Emotional Stroop

Appendix
List of Spanish words with positive, negative, and neutral
emotional valence presented in the task (with English
translation in brackets). The words are ordered alphabeti-
cally in Spanish.

Positive Negative Neutral

Afecto (Affection) Agona (Agony) Banco (Bench)
Amado (Loved) Bomba (Bomb) Barril (Barrel)
Amor (Love) Brutal (Brutal) Brazo (Arm)
Anhelo (Desire) Cncer (Cancer) Cable (Cord)
nimo (Cheer) Celos (Jealousy) Calle (Street)
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Beso (Kiss) Choque (Crash) Carro (Wagon)

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Chiste (Joke) Clera (Rage) Cesta (Basket)

Coche (Car) Diablo (Devil) Codo (Elbow)
Coito (Intercourse) Dolor (Pain) Corcho (Cork)
Dlar (Dollar) Enfado (Anger) Cuenco (Bowl)
xito (Success) Estrs (Stress) Dedo (Finger)
Fama (Fame) Guerra (War) Esfera (Sphere)
Fiesta (Party) Horror (Horror) Farol (Headlight)
Ganar (Win) Hostil (Hostile) Fase (Phase)
Genial (Terrific) Infiel (Unfaithful) Hbito (Habit)
Gloria (Glory) Ladrn (Thief) Heno (Hay)
Guapa (Pretty) Loco (Mad) Jarra (Jug)

ntimo (Intimate) Miedo (Afraid) Lpiz (Pencil)
Jfflbilo (Joy) Odio (Hatred) Llano (Plain)
Lder (Leader) Rabia (Rabies) Motor (Engine)
Madre (Mother) Rehn (Hostage) Olla (Kettle)
Pareja (Couple) RiÇa (Quarrel) Parte (Part)
Pasin (Passion) Temor (Fear) Pieza (Item)
Rico (Riches) Terror (Terrorist) Pster (Poster)
Risa (Laughter) Txico (Toxic) Puerta (Door)
Sexo (Sex) Trauma (Trauma) Repisa (Mantel)
Sexy (Sexy) Tumor (Tumor) Silla (Chair)
Tesoro (Treasure) lcera (Ulcer) Taxi (Taxi)
Viaje (Travel) Veneno (Venom) Tinta (Ink)
Vida (Life) Violar (Rape) Venda (Bandage)

Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(4):149–164 Hogrefe Publishing