The Influence Of Language Proficiency On Stroop Effect

Stroop effect refers to the phenomenon that color information and meaning information of color words are interfered.Previous studies have shown that the performance of subjects in Stroop tasks is affected by language proficiency,but the neural mechanism behind this effect has not been fully studied.In this study,functional magnetic resonance imaging(fmri)was used to investigate the brain mechanism behind the influence of language proficiency on Stroop tasks by analyzing the imaging data of Chinese and English bilingual Stroop color word tasks.This study recruited subjects with unbalanced bilingual Chinese and English.The results are as follows :(1)at the behavioral level,the Stroop effect,the language effect,and the interaction between language and Stroop interference(the difference between the Chinese Stroop effect and the English Stroop effect)are all significant.Chinese Stroop simple effect is significant,English Stroop simple effect is significant,Chinese and English differences are significant under the condition of color word inconsistency,Chinese and English differences are not significant under the condition of color word consistency.(2)On the nerve level,the dorsolateral prefrontal lobe and the left inferior frontal gyrus were significantly activated in the main Stroop effect in this study.Compared with the Chinese condition and the English condition,the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and bilateral dorsal occipital lobe showed stronger activation under the Chinese condition.Compared with English condition and Chinese condition,bilateral ventral occipital lobe had stronger activation.The interaction results showed stronger activation of the left wedge and the left superior occipital gyrus.The Stroop effect in Chinese causes significant activation of the left inferior frontal gyrus.Left inferior frontal gyrus has no significant activation in English Stroop effect.Compared with the English task,the Chinese task had stronger activation in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and right inferior occipital gyrus under the condition of inconsistent color words.In reverse comparison,there was no significant activation of brain regions.Under the condition of consistent color characters,compared with the English task,the bilateral dorsal occipital lobe and the right dorsolateral prefrontal lobe had stronger activation.Compared with the Chinese task,the ventral occipital lobe had stronger activation.This study found that the Stroop effect was stronger in languages with higher proficiency in unbalanced bilinguals.Language proficiency affected the involvement of Stroop task-related brain regions in the task.The higher the language proficiency,the greater the activation of brain areas associated with tasks.These brain regions include the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex,which plays an important role in attention control,and the left inferior frontal gyrus,which is associated with response inhibition.