• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.27-51
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• 2015

The present study tested the effect of a top-down influence on recalling the colors of Stroop words. Participants remembered the colors of 1, 2, 3 or 6 Stroop words. After 1 second of a memory delay, they were asked to recall the color of a cued Stroop word by selecting out its corresponding color on a color-wheel stimulus. The correct recall was defined when the participants chose a color that was within ${\pm}45^{\circ}$ from the exact location of Stroop word's color on the color-wheel. Otherwise, the recall was defined as incorrect. The analyses of the frequency distribution of the participants' responses in the error trials showed that the probability of choosing the color-name of the target Stroop word was higher than the probability of other five color-names on the color-wheel. Further analyses showed that increasing the number of Stroop words to manipulate memory load did not affect the probability of the Stroop interference. These results indicate that the top-down interference by Stroop manipulation may induce systematic distortion of the stored representation in visual working memory.