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The counting Stroop: a cognitive interference task

Nature Protocols volume 1, pages 230–233 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

The counting Stroop is a validated Stroop task variant. Initially designed as a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task for identifying brain regions subserving cognition and attention (dorsal anterior midcingulate cortex (daMCC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC)), it has been used to study cognition in healthy volunteers and to identify functional brain abnormalities in neuropsychiatric disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). During the counting Stroop, subjects report by button-press the number of words (one to four) appearing on the screen, regardless of word meaning. Neutral-word control trials contain single semantic category common animals (e.g., 'dog' written three times), while interference trials contain number words that are incongruent with the correct response (e.g., 'two' written four times). The counting Stroop can be completed in approximately 20 min per subject and can be used offline (behavioral performance) or with fMRI, positron emission tomography, event-related potentials, magnetoencephalography or intracranial recordings.

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Figure 1: Counting Stroop trial examples.

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Acknowledgements

Support for this work was provided by the Clinical Investigator Training Program of the Harvard/ MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology-Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in collaboration with Pfizer, Inc. (G.B.) and grant MH-01215 from the US National Institutes of Mental Health (S.L.R.).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychiatric Neuroscience Division, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS), Boston, Massachusetts, USA

    George Bush, Lisa M Shin & Scott L Rauch

  2. MGH/MIT/HMS Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Functional and Structural Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Harvard Medical School, Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    George Bush

  3. Department of Psychology, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA

    Paul J Whalen

  4. Department of Psychology, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA

    Lisa M Shin

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  1. George Bush
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  4. Scott L Rauch
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Contributions

Initial task design was by G.B. All authors contributed to task refinement, validation testing and manuscript preparation.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to George Bush.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Bush, G., Whalen, P., Shin, L. et al. The counting Stroop: a cognitive interference task. Nat Protoc 1, 230–233 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nprot.2006.35

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