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Habituation of Brain Activity with Repetition in Color and Picture–Word Stroop Tests

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Abstract

As a widely used mental task for functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), the original color–word Stroop task has the advantage of being difficult to habituate, but also the disadvantage of being difficult to understand, especially for children. While the introduction of derived Stroop tasks offers highly promising countermeasures, changes in brain activity during these tests have not been well tested. We investigated the degree of habituation between the original and a derived Stroop task by measuring brain activity to obtain a better fNIRS task design. Fourteen healthy adults participated in the study, and a 10-channel fNIRS device was used. A picture–word Stroop task with lower linguistic conflict than the original was conducted. The original and derived Stroop tests were repeated four times in a 1-week interval. We found that the original Stroop test did not show any significant changes in brain activity with repeated measures; however, brain activity decreased during the derived test. The differences in habituation between the original and derived tests may be due to the differences in the strength of the linguistic conflict. Our findings also highlight the need to consider the effects of habituation when using derived Stroop tasks in repeated measures.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Yukie Kurosawa and Nami Murooka for technological assistance.

Funding

This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid (C) (KAKENHI: JP16K01497) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, and Technology of Japan. The funder had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, Gunma University Graduate School of Health Sciences, 3-39-22 Showa-machi, Maebashi, Gunma, 371-8514, Japan

    Senichiro Kikuchi, Yusuke Nishizawa, Kenji Tsuchiya, Kaori Shimoda & Kazuki Hirao

  2. Wakaba Hospital, Maebashi, Gunma, Japan

    Nobutaka Tsutsui

  3. Faculty of Health Sciences, Nagano University of Health and Medicine, Nagano, Nagano, Japan

    Kenji Tsuchiya

  4. Department of Statistical Modelling, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Tachikawa, Tokyo, Japan

    Fumikazu Miwakeichi

  5. Department of Statistical Science, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI, Tachikawa, Tokyo, Japan

    Fumikazu Miwakeichi

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  1. Senichiro Kikuchi
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  2. Nobutaka Tsutsui
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  3. Yusuke Nishizawa
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  7. Fumikazu Miwakeichi
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Correspondence to Senichiro Kikuchi.

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Associate Editor Stefan M. Duma oversaw the review of this article.

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Kikuchi, S., Tsutsui, N., Nishizawa, Y. et al. Habituation of Brain Activity with Repetition in Color and Picture–Word Stroop Tests. Ann Biomed Eng (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-024-03509-w

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