Abstract
Intriguing findings obtained by Rosenbaum, Mama, and Algom (2017, Psychological Science, 28, 1864-1867) suggest that variations in posture (sitting vs. standing) can influence selective attention on the Stroop task (a cognitive that involves naming the hue of a colour word when the hue and word meaning are congruent or incongruent). The authors showed a smaller difference in response times between congruent and incongruent trials (i.e., the Stroop effect) when participants completed the Stroop task standing compared to when they completed it sitting. Across two institutions, we conducted five well-powered replications of Rosenbaum et al.’s experiments 1 and 3, and explored the impact of adding neutral trials, changing response modes from vocal to manual, and varying the nature of the standing posture from standing on one foot vs. two feet. While all experiments yielded the standard Stroop effect, we were unable to detect any influence of posture (sitting vs. standing) on the magnitude of the Stroop effect. Taken together, our studies provide no evidence to support the notion that posture (sitting vs. standing) influences the magnitude of the Stroop effect. In our current investigation, we explore whether these null findings extend beyond the Stroop task and into other paradigms which have been used to successfully demonstrate an effect of posture on attentional processes such as Smith et al.'s (2019) visual search task.