Can Goal Reminders Reduce the Stroop Effect in Older Adults?

Previous research has demonstrated robust age-related differences in the Stroop effect. Such differences are often attributed to deficits in cognitive control processes, such as goal maintenance ability. Previous research in younger adults has reliably demonstrated that the magnitude of the Stroop effect, particularly for those lower in working memory capacity, can be reduced by providing periodic goal reminders. The present study tested if this benefit of goal reminders extends to another group with reduced goal maintenance ability, older adults. Younger (N = 80) and older (N = 78) adults completed a vocal color-word Stroop task in which most trials were congruent, a condition which induces goal neglect and exacerbates Stroop effects. Critically, half of the participants in each age group were stopped every 24 trials to vocalize either a goalreminder statement (“The goal is to name the color, not the word”) or a nongoal statement (“This is part of my psychology study”). The key finding was that the goal reminders benefitted older adults as evidenced by a reduced Stroop effect in reaction time for the goal condition compared with the nongoal condition. This pattern was not observed for younger adults. Error rate analyses suggested that the benefits of goal reminders were short-lived, with errors primarily reduced in the first half of the run (e.g., 12 trials) following goal reminders. We suggest that goal reminders can be a useful intervention to momentarily improve cognitive control in older adults. We discuss the implications of this finding for theories of cognitive control that implicate reductions in goal maintenance at the center of age-related cognitive decline.