Maria Augustinova
email: maria.augustinova@univ-rouen.frludovic.ferrand@uca.fr

David Clarys

Nicolas Spatola

Ludovic Ferrand

Some further clarifications on age-related differences in Stroop interference

Keywords: Aging, Attentional Selectivity, Semantic conflict, Single-letter coloring and cueing, Stroop interference, Response conflict

published or not. The documents may come

Abstract

Both the locus and processes underlying the age-related differences in Stroop interference are usually inferred from changes in magnitudes of standard (i.e., overall) Stroop interference. Therefore, this study addressed these still-open issues directly. To this end, a sample of younger (18-26 years old) and healthy older (72-97 years old) was administered the semantic Stroop paradigm (that assesses the relative contribution of semantic compared to response conflict both of which contribute to overall Stroop interference) combined with a single-letter coloring and cuing (SLCC) procedure. Independently of an increased attentional focus on the relevant color-dimension of Stroop words induced by SLCC (as compared to all letters colored and cued, ALCC), greater magnitudes of standard Stroop interference were observed in older (as compared to younger) adults. These differences were due to greater magnitudes of response conflict whereas magnitudes of semantic conflict remained significant and unchanged by healthy aging and SLCC. Thus, this direct evidence places the locus of agerelated differences in Stroop interference at the level of response conflict (as opposed to semantic and/or both conflicts). In terms of processes underlying these differences, the reported evidence show that both age-groups are equally (in)efficient in a) focusing on the relevant color-dimension and b) in suppressing the meaning of the irrelevant word-dimension of Stroop words. Healthy older adults are simply less efficient in suppressing the (pre-)response activity primed by the fully processed meaning of the irrelevant word-dimension.

Standard interpretations of age-related differences in Stroop inference and a more general issue of how attentional selectivity actually operates in the Stroop task are therefore reconsidered in this paper.

The Stroop task [START_REF] Stroop | Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions[END_REF] requires individuals to identify, as quickly and accurately as possible, the font color of written characters without reading them. Despite this requirement, the typical result is that individuals' identification times are longer and more error-prone for color-incongruent Stroop words (e.g., "BLUE" displayed in green ink; hereafter BLUE green ), than for color-neutral words (e.g., "DEAL" displayed in green ink, hereafter DEAL green ).

Although the magnitude of this latter differencecalled Stroop interference (e.g., BLUE green -DEAL green )remains constant across middle adulthood, it begins to increase at the age of sixty-five (e.g., [START_REF] Comalli | Interference effects of Stroop colourword test in childhood, adulthood, and ageing[END_REF] for the first empirical demonstration). Indeed, significantly greater magnitudes of Stroop interference are habitually observed in healthy older adults as compared to their young counterparts (e.g., [START_REF] Jackson | Age-related changes in attentional selection: Quality of task set or degradation of task set across time?[END_REF][START_REF] Li | Age differences in Stroop-like interference as a function of semantic relatedness[END_REF][START_REF] Spieler | Stroop performance in healthy younger and older adults and in individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer's type[END_REF].

The fact that greater magnitudes of Stroop interference persist in healthy older adults even after controlling for general slowing (e.g., [START_REF] Jackson | Age-related changes in attentional selection: Quality of task set or degradation of task set across time?[END_REF][START_REF] Li | Age differences in Stroop-like interference as a function of semantic relatedness[END_REF] is taken as evidence that their selective attention declines with aging. Indeed, "The conflict between the relevant (color of the word) and irrelevant (name of the word) dimensions of the stimulus on incongruent trials presents a particularly difficult task for the selective attentional system. A system that efficiently suppresses the irrelevant dimension (i.e., the word) should exhibit faster color naming than a system in which impaired suppression of the word dimension allows greater competition between the word-name and the color name for response output." (Spieler et al., 1996, p. 461).

It should be noted that this rather consensual conceptualization of both the locus and processes underlying the age-related differences in Stroop interference remains inferred from changes in magnitudes of standard (i.e., overall) Stroop interference depicted above.

Consequently, this paper attempts to shed a more direct light on just these issues.

Locus of age-related differences in Stroop interference

As mentioned above, greater magnitudes of Stroop interference observed in healthy older (as compared to younger) adults are usually attributed to less efficient suppressing of the word-dimension that leads in turn to greater magnitudes of response conflict [START_REF] Spieler | Stroop performance in healthy younger and older adults and in individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer's type[END_REF]. This reasoning is rooted in so-called single-stage response competition accounts (see e.g., [START_REF] Risko | Filling a gap in the semantic gradient: Color associates and response set in the Stroop task[END_REF] in this outlet) that consider Stroop interference as a unitary phenomenon resulting from a single source of conflict (i.e., response conflict; e.g., [START_REF] Macleod | Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review[END_REF]. Within this latter view, the efficiency of suppressing of the irrelevant worddimension determines the amount of evidence provided toward a response (e.g., blue for BLUE green or deal for DEAL green ). Given that for color-incongruent Stroop words (BLUE green ), this (incorrect) response is part of the response set, it competes (i.e., interferes) with the one cued by the relevant color-dimension (i.e., green for BLUE green ).

Even though this latter view still dominates both psychological research and practice [START_REF] Augustinova | Further investigation of distinct components of Stroop interference and of their reduction by short responsestimulus intervals[END_REF][START_REF] Risko | Filling a gap in the semantic gradient: Color associates and response set in the Stroop task[END_REF], it is now challenged by multiple lines of researchthat have given rise to what is now termed multi-stage accounts [START_REF] Risko | Filling a gap in the semantic gradient: Color associates and response set in the Stroop task[END_REF]. Despite their differences (e.g., [START_REF] Augustinova | Further investigation of distinct components of Stroop interference and of their reduction by short responsestimulus intervals[END_REF] for a review), these accounts share the idea that Stroop interference is a more complex phenomenon that goes beyond a single (i.e., response) conflict depicted above.

In line with this reasoning, several studies published in this journal depart from the idea that the standard (i.e., overall) Stroop interference specifically results from two kinds conflicts: stimulus conflict (SC) that is semantic in its nature (hence semantic conflict) and response conflict (RC). In other words, these studies subscribe to so-called SC-RC accounts of Stroop interference [START_REF] Augustinova | Further investigation of distinct components of Stroop interference and of their reduction by short responsestimulus intervals[END_REF] for this terminology; and e.g., [START_REF] Augustinova | Single-letter coloring and spatial cueing do not eliminate nor reduce a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect[END_REF][START_REF] Augustinova | Behavioral and electrophysiological investigation of semantic and response conflict in the Stroop task[END_REF] for examples of these studies). In order to isolate their specific contribution to standard Stroop interference, these studies used the so-called semantic Stroop paradigm.

This paradigm supplements Stroop words depicted above with another kind of colorincongruent words (e.g., SKY displayed in green, hereafter SKY green first used by [START_REF] Klein | Semantic power measured through the effect of words with color-naming[END_REF] that are only associated with a given color (i.e., SKY with blue). This addition -initially suggested by [START_REF] Neely | Is semantic activation automatic? A critical re-evaluation[END_REF] and first implemented by [START_REF] Manwell | Single letter coloring and spatial cueing eliminates a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect[END_REF] in this outlet-lies on the assumption that associated color-incongruent words only involve semantic conflict whereas standard color-incongruent words involve both semantic and response conflicts. Indeed, because the meaning activated by the irrelevant word dimension of both colorincongruent words (e.g., BLUE green and SKY green ) corresponds to and/or is closely related to a color (blue here), it is thought to interfere with processing of the meaning that is activated by the relevant color-dimension (e.g., green) of these words. This conflict is likely to arise in an amodal semantic network because "delays of processing occur whenever distinct semantic codes are simultaneously activated, and that these delays become acute when the conflicting codes are values on a single dimension or a closely related dimensions." [START_REF] Seymour | Conceptual encoding and locus of the Stroop effect[END_REF] 263; see also e.g., [START_REF] Augustinova | Behavioral and electrophysiological investigation of semantic and response conflict in the Stroop task[END_REF] for corresponding N400-like evidence).

Additionally, once the irrelevant word dimension of standard color-incongruent words (e.g., BLUE green ) has been adequately processed, it primes a corresponding (pre-)response tendency that shares the same response set (hence interferes with) that the one primed by the meaning of the relevant color-dimension (i.e., generates the response conflict as depicted above). Inversely, because the word dimension of associated color-incongruent words (e.g., SKY green ) does not activate (pre-)response tendencies linked to the associated color (e.g., press a blue button on seeing SKY; see [START_REF] Schmidt | Dissociating stimulus-stimulus and response-response effects in the Stroop task[END_REF] for a direct demonstration), their response set does not overlap with that activated by the color-dimension. Consequently, associated color-incongruent words (e.g., SKY green ) are, exactly like color-neutral ones (DEAL green ), free of response conflict (but see e.g., [START_REF] Hasshim | Two-to-one color-response mapping and the presence of semantic conflict in the Stroop task[END_REF]Klein, 1964 for a different view). This latter kind of items is also free of semantic conflict.

In line with these different assumptions, these studies consistently observed the delay in processing (i.e., interference) for both types of color-incongruent words (BLUE green and SKY green ) compared to color-neutral ones (PUT green ) with the magnitude of standard Stroop interference (BLUE green -PUT green ) being significantly greater than the one of semantic Stroop interference (SKY green -PUT green ). Thus these different studies successfully demonstrated that both semantic and response conflicts jointly contribute to the standard (i.e., overall) Stroop interference [START_REF] Augustinova | Single-letter coloring and spatial cueing do not eliminate nor reduce a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect[END_REF]2015;[START_REF] Manwell | Single letter coloring and spatial cueing eliminates a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect[END_REF]; see also e.g., White, Risko, & Besner, 2016).

Building on these studies, the first goal of this paper was to examine the locus of agerelated differences in Stroop interference. More specifically, it was aimed at examining the extent to which greater magnitudes of Stroop interference in healthy older adults (as compared to their younger counterparts) selectively result from the amplified semantic conflict, response conflict or whether healthy aging actually amplifies both conflicts.

If indeed healthy aging causes an impaired suppression of the word-dimension (see Spieler et al.'s reasoning above), healthy older adults should produce disproportionately greater amounts of both semantic and response conflicts. This pattern of results should be evidenced by respectively greater semantic (SKY green -PUT green ) and standard (BLUE green -

PUT green ) Stroop interference.
This prediction contrasts however with a largely overlooked work of [START_REF] Li | Age differences in Stroop-like interference as a function of semantic relatedness[END_REF]. Their healthy older (vs. younger) participants showed significantly greater magnitudes of standard (BLUE green -**** green ) but not of semantic Stroop interference (SKY green -**** green ) that remained significant and of the same magnitude in both young and healthy older participants. This pattern of results suggests that age-related differences in Stroop interference result from differences in response conflict but not in sematic conflict.

However, this latter conclusion -implying that healthy older adults are not less efficient in suppressing the word-dimension of Stroop words-remains tentative because magnitudes of both semantic and standards interference were artificially inflated by the use of a non-word color-neutral baseline (i.e.,**** green ). Therefore the experiment reported below was aimed at replicating these latter results (or alternatively those in line with [START_REF] Spieler | Stroop performance in healthy younger and older adults and in individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer's type[END_REF] while using the aforementioned semantic Stroop paradigm that uses color-neutral words as a baseline.

Processes underlying age-related differences in Stroop interference

As mentioned above, the possibility that the locus of age-related differences in Stroop interference is specifically situated at the level of response and not at the level of semantic conflict [START_REF] Li | Age differences in Stroop-like interference as a function of semantic relatedness[END_REF] has important implications for our current understanding of processes underlying age-related differences in Stroop interference.

Indeed, this result would directly demonstrate that there is no age-related deficit in suppression of the irrelevant word-meaning. This latter idea remains in line with the fact that processes involved word-recognition (processing from visual features up to semantics) in healthy older adults are at least as efficient as in younger adults (e.g., [START_REF] Lien | Visual word recognition without central attention: Evidence for greater automaticity with advancing age[END_REF] for more efficiency in older adults).

Consequently, greater magnitudes of Stroop interference in healthy older adults (as compared to their younger counterparts) would result from less efficient suppression of an irrelevant (pre-)response activity that is activated by the word-dimension of Stroop words (i.e., response conflict). But also and/or alternatively, these differences may result from greater difficulty of healthy older adults to focus their attention on the relevant color-dimension of Stroop words. [START_REF] Jackson | Age-related changes in attentional selection: Quality of task set or degradation of task set across time?[END_REF] were the first to raise just this issue. To this end, they manipulated the time that elapses between the individual's response and the presentation of a new stimulus on a computer-screen (i.e., response-stimulus interval, hereafter RSI). In line with the idea that short RSI induces a more consistent focus on the relevant color-dimension (e.g., [START_REF] Jong | Goal neglect and inhibitory limitations: dissociable causes of interference effects in conflict situations[END_REF][START_REF] Parris | Task conflict in the Stroop task: When Stroop interference decreases as Stroop facilitation increases in a low task conflict context[END_REF], the magnitude of Stroop effect (e.g., BLUE green -BLUE blue ) was reduced at the short RSI compared with the long RSI in both younger and older adults (resulting in Congruency × RSI interaction). Said differently, older adults still displayed significantly greater Stroop effect than younger adults (resulting in Congruency × Age-group interaction), but there was no evidence of an interaction between RSI and Age-group (such that the overall Congruency × RSI × Age-group interactions also remained non significant). This pattern of results led Jackson and Balota to conclude that the decline in ability to maintain consistent focus on the relevant color-dimension is not the primary mechanism underlying age-related differences in Stroop interference. As can be seen, this conclusion remains silent with respect to the exact role of an age-related deficit in suppressing the worddimension of Stroop words (suppression of their meaning vs. response primed by the fully processed meaning, see above). Indeed, any such reasoning would be tentative given that Stroop effect (e.g., BLUE green -BLUE blue ) measured in this study confounds both interference (resulting from both semantic and response conflicts) and facilitation [START_REF] Macleod | Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: An integrative review[END_REF].

Therefore, the second goal of this paper was to examine this yet unanswered issue of processes underlying age-related differences in Stroop interference directly.

To this end, the aforementioned semantic Stroop paradigm was combined with a single-letter coloring and spatial cueing (SLCC) procedure. This procedure -first introduced by Manwell and colleagues (2004)-consists in using the small arrows to spatially pre-cue the position(s) that will be subsequently occupied by the target letter(s)the color of which is to be named. This single letter (in SLCC, as opposed all letters) is then presented in an incongruent color (e.g., green "E" in the word "BLUE" with "B", "L" and "U" presented in another incongruent color from the response set). SLCC (as opposed to all letters colored and cued, hereafter ALCC) is likely to improve selection-for-action by separating perceptually the two dimensions of colorincongruent Stroop words (e.g., [START_REF] Augustinova | Single-letter coloring and spatial cueing do not eliminate nor reduce a semantic contribution to the Stroop effect[END_REF][START_REF] Augustinova | Behavioral and electrophysiological investigation of semantic and response conflict in the Stroop task[END_REF]Manwell et al.' Account 2). Indeed, the additional (i.e., unpublished) evidence from Augustinova and colleagues (2015), suggests that independently of Stroop words' color-incongruency, SLCC elicited greater negativity (from 185 to 245 ms) at occipito-parietal sites than ALCC. Even though this ERP evidence cannot be readily equated with cognitive processes, it is consistent with the idea that SLCC produces an early shift in attentional focus toward the relevant colordimension (e.g., [START_REF] Besner | What kind of attention modulates the Stroop effect?[END_REF] 1 .

It is thus not surprising that this procedure is known to significantly reduce Stroop interference (e.g., [START_REF] Küper | Attentional focus manipulations affect naming latencies of neutral but not of incongruent Stroop trials[END_REF] for a review). For instance, in the aforementioned study of Augustinova and colleagues (2015), SLCC (vs. ALCC) reduced standard but not semantic Stroop interference as evidenced by speeded latencies on standard color-incongruent items. Therefore, SLCC (vs. ALCC) reduced standard (i.e., overall) Stroop interference via reduction of the response but not of semantic conflict. Independently of coloring and cuing, semantic conflict remained significant and of the same magnitude (as also evidenced by corresponding amplitudes of N400-like).

A joint consideration of these behavioral data along with ERP evidence mentioned above suggests that the benefit in (late) response processing (i.e., reduced response conflict) is still associated with changes in early processing (from 185 to 245 ms). Therefore, this manipulation was expected to shed some additional light on processes underlying greater magnitudes of Stroop interference in older (as compared to younger) adults. Building on Jackson and Balota, we do not a priori expect greater Stroop interference in older adults to result specifically from the difficulty to focus their attention on the relevant color-dimension of Stroop words. Therefore, as in their study, Coloring × Age-Group interaction should remain non significant and the a priori expected Interference-Type × Coloring along with Interference-Type × Age-group interactions should not be included in the overall Interference-Type × Coloring × Age-Group interaction.

To sum up, the study reported below was aimed at examining both the locus and processes underlying age-related differences in Stroop interference. To this end, the semantic Stroop paradigm combined with a single-letter coloring and spatial cueing (SLCC) procedure was administered to a sample of younger (18-26 years old) and healthy older (72-97 years old) adults. Given that some predictions tested in this study imply null effects, the usual frequentist statistical approach was extended to include a Bayesian approach which makes it possible to quantify the evidence in favor of the alternative and of the null hypotheses (e.g., [START_REF] Robidoux | Conflict resolved: On the role of spatial attention in reading and color naming tasks[END_REF].

Method

Participants 29 younger (17 females and 12 males; M age =20.92) and 29 healthy older (22 females and 7 males; M age =79.07) native French-speakers reporting normal or corrected-to-normal vision volunteered to take part in this experiment (see Table 1A in Supplementary Materials for further demographic and psychometric information).

Design and Stimuli

The data was collected using a 3 (Stimulus-Type: incongruent vs. color-associated vs. In each condition, all the stimuli were similar in length and frequency. In half the trials (i.e., ALCC-condition), the entire letter string appeared in incongruent target colors. In the other half of the trials (i.e., SLCCcondition), a single letter appeared in one incongruent target color, with the remaining letters appearing in another incongruent color from the response set.

Apparatus and Procedure

The participants first completed the computerized version of the Stroop task described above. DMDX software [START_REF] Forster | DMDX: A Windows display program with millisecond accuracy[END_REF] running on a portable PC (Dell Precision) was used for stimulus presentation and data collection. The participants were seated approximately 50 cm from a 17-inch screen. They were asked to name the color of a letter indicated by small arrows as quickly and accurately as possible while ignoring everything else in the display. To this end, and as in Augustinova et al. (2010, Experiment 2), the participants were instructed to concentrate on the fixation cross ("+") that appeared for 500 ms in the center of the screen at the beginning of each trial. This was then replaced by small arrows (height of 1.2° of visual angle) displayed 0.6° above and below the position previously occupied by the fixation cross and subsequently occupied by the target letter. The arrows (i.e., spatial cues) remained on screen for 150 ms, after which the stimulus was displayed. In order to control for the letter-position effects in SLCC (e.g., [START_REF] Parris | An optimal viewing position effect in the Stroop task when only one letter is the color carrier[END_REF], the spatially pre-cued letter was randomly located at the initial, middle, final or the optimal viewing position. Because of this latter variation, the stimuli shifted horizontally from trial to trial in such a way that the spatially pre-cued letter always appeared in the same location as the preceding central fixation cue. The stimulus continued to be displayed until the participant responded or until 2000 ms had elapsed. The participants' responses were recorded via a Koss 70-dB microphone headset and stored on the hard drive.

After completing 32 practice trials consisting of strings of asterisks (presented in the four colors described above), the participants performed the experimental task, which consisted of a single block of 180 experimental trials (see above). After a break, they completed a psychometric test battery designed to assess various aspects of psychological functioning (see Table 1A).

Results and Discussion

Latencies greater than 3 SDs above or below each participant's mean latency for each condition (1.24% of the total data) were excluded from the analyses. Given the important general slowing in older (compared to younger) adults, the analyses of mean correct latencies (see Table 1 and 2 and Supplementary Materials) cannot be meaningfully interpreted (e.g., [START_REF] Faust | Individual differences in information-processing rate and amount: Implications for group differences in response latency[END_REF]. To control for this issue, these latencies were transformed into percentages of standard ([(M standard color-incongruent RT-M color-neutral RT)/M color- neutral RT]*100) and semantic Stroop interference ([(M color-associated incongruent RT-M color-neutral RT)/M color-neutral RT]*100) as in Li and Bosman's data (1996). These percentages of standard and semantic Stroop interference observed in both Coloring conditions were subsequently analyzed using both traditional frequentist and Bayesian analyses.

The Bayes factor (BF) corresponding to the Bayesian probability of occurrence of a hypothesis (H1) and the null hypothesis (H0) was calculated in JASP (JASP Team, 2017). All Bayesian analyses were conducted on a BF 10 comparison (i.e., H1 was compared with H0).

All priors were equal. The BF for each parameter was estimated as a ratio of the likelihood of the model including the parameter and the likelihood of the model excluding it, and Jeffreys' As indicated by a marginally significant Interference-Type × Age-Group interaction (see Table 1) on percentages of interference, age-related differences in the processing of Stroop words persisted even after controlling for general slowing.

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The decomposition of this latter interaction showed that the simple main effect of Age-Group was significant for the magnitude of standard Stroop interference [F(1,56)=9.45; p=.003, η p ²=.14]. It was significantly greater in the older (M=12.08; SD=.90; IC[10.29,13.87]) than in the younger adults (M=8.18;SD=.90;IC[6.38,9.97]). Conversely, the simple main effect of Age-Group did not reach the conventional level of significance for the magnitude of semantic Stroop interference [F(1,56)=1.80; p=.185, η p ²=.03]. It was of a similar magnitude in both the older (M=3.08; SD=.67; IC[1.72,4.42]) and younger (M=1.82; SD=.67; IC [.48, 3.15]) participants. As far as the magnitude of standard Stroop interference is concerned, Bayes factor (hereafter BF) provided moderate (between 3-10) evidence for the Age-Group effect hypothesis (BF 10 =3.384). Additionally, BF 10 =0.439 provided anecdotal (between 1/3-1) evidence for the null hypothesis of no Age-Group effect on semantic Stroop interference.

In line with Li and Bosman's past findings (1996), the aforementioned results seem to place the locus of the well-established age-related differences in Stroop interference at the level of response conflict and not at the level of semantic conflict (or at level of both conflicts, [START_REF] Spieler | Stroop performance in healthy younger and older adults and in individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer's type[END_REF].

To address further processes underlying these age-related differences, a significant Interference-Type × Coloring interaction (see Table 2) was first decomposed.

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This decomposition revealed that the simple main effect of Coloring was significant for the magnitude of standard Stroop interference [F(1,56)=45.66; p<.001, η p ²=.45]. It was considerably reduced by SLCC (M=6.26;SD=.62;IC[5.01,7.51]) as compared to ALCC (i.e., standard coloring condition; M=13.99; SD=1.04; IC[11.92,16.06]). SLCC-procedure left the semantic Stroop interference unaffected [F(1,56)=.71; p=.402, η p ²=.01]it was comparable in both the ALCC (M=2.83;SD=.59;IC[1.65,4.02]) and SLCC (M=2.07; SD=.71; IC [.64, 3.50]) conditions. Additionally, BF 10 >300 provided decisive evidence for the Coloring-effect hypothesis on standard Stroop interference and BF 10 =0.293 moderate evidence (i.e., between 1/10-1/3) for the null hypothesis of no Coloring-effect on semantic Stroop interference.

The absence of Coloring × Age-Group and Interference-Type × Coloring × Age-Group interactions suggests that the age-related differences in response conflict reported above remain constant under both ALCC and SLCC. Yet, the results of further planned comparisons of the Age-Group effects on the standard Stroop interference nuance this latter idea. Indeed, the age-related differences in standard Stroop interference were significant in the ALCC-condition [F(1,56)=7.15; p=.010, η p ² =.11] butdue to the SLCC benefit described aboveonly marginally significant in the SLCC-condition [F(1,56)=3.31; p=.074, η p ²=.056].

The BF evidence for the Age-effect hypothesis on standard Stroop interference was moderate in ALCC (BF 10 =4.801) but anecdotal in SLCC (BF 10 =1.045).

These additional analyses also suggest that both young and older participants are equally and highly responsive to SLCC and if there are any age-related differences in terms of the benefit from this procedure, then it is the older participants who potentially benefit from this procedure more than younger ones. The results of planned comparisons of the SLCCeffect on standard Stroop interference seem generally consistent with this latter idea. Indeed, this effect was significant in both samples but somewhat smaller in the younger [F(1,56)=14.22; p<.001, η p ²=.20] than in the older adults [F(1,56)=33.48; p<.001, η p ²=.37] (see Table 1). Despite this, the BF evidence for the Coloring-effect hypothesis on standard Stroop interference was decisive in both samples: younger (BF 10 >300) and older (BF 10 >300) adults.

Taken together, these different results are thus in line with [START_REF] Jackson | Age-related changes in attentional selection: Quality of task set or degradation of task set across time?[END_REF] suggesting that greater magnitudes of standard Stroop interference in older adults are unlikely to result from an impaired ability to focus their attention on the relevant color-dimension of Stroop words. Thus, planned comparisons of the Age-Group and Coloring-effects on semantic Stroop interference were conducted to examine further the extent to which these greater magnitudes can be attributed to an age-related deficit in ignoring the irrelevant worddimension of Stroop words.

The planned age-group effects were non-significant in both the ALCC [F(1,56) = 2.27; p = .137, ηp² = .039] and SLCC conditions [F(1,56) = .27; p = .603, ηp² = .005]. This conclusion is supported by BF evidence that was anecdotal (BF 10 =0.685) in ALCC and moderate (BF 10 =0.298) in SLCC for the null hypothesis of no age-effect on semantic interference. Similarly, planned comparisons of Coloring-effects on this interference showed no significant reduction either in the younger [F(1,56)=.04; p=.845, η p ²=.001] or the older [F(1,56)=.997; p=.322, η p ²=.017] participants. BF provided respectively moderate evidence (BF 10 =0.272) in younger and anecdotal evidence (BF 10 =0.419) in older adults for the null hypothesis of no Coloring-effect on semantic conflict. These latter results along with those presented above suggest that greater magnitudes of standard Stroop interference in older (as compared to younger) adults are solely due to less efficient suppression of an irrelevant response that is activated by the word-dimension of Stroop words (i.e., response conflict) and not to less efficient suppression of the irrelevant meaning of these words (i.e., semantic conflict).

General Discussion and Conclusions

The direct empirical evidence reported in this paper runs counter to consensually held views on both the locus and processes underlying age-related differences in Stroop interference that were inferred from mere changes in magnitudes of standard (i.e., overall) Stroop effect/interference (e.g., [START_REF] Li | Age differences in Stroop-like interference as a function of semantic relatedness[END_REF] for an only exception). Indeed, it clearly places the locus of these differences at the level of response as opposed to semantic conflict [START_REF] Li | Age differences in Stroop-like interference as a function of semantic relatedness[END_REF] or as opposed to both conflicts [START_REF] Spieler | Stroop performance in healthy younger and older adults and in individuals with dementia of the Alzheimer's type[END_REF].

With respect to processes underlying these age-related differences, the empirical evidence reported above shows that both younger and older adults are equally efficient in their focus on the relevant color-dimension [START_REF] Jackson | Age-related changes in attentional selection: Quality of task set or degradation of task set across time?[END_REF]; see also e.g. [START_REF] Ruthruff | Aging and Attention[END_REF] and equally (in)efficient in suppressing the meaning of the irrelevant wordmeaning of Strop words. Therefore this direct evidence also has several important implications for a more general issue of how selective attention actually operates in the Stroop task.

Selective attention is "the ability to focus on one thing [e.g., to attend to and process a relevant color-dimension of Stroop words] while ignoring other things [e.g., an irrelevant word-dimension] excluding to-be-ignored information from deeper processing and control over action." (Ruthruff & Lien, 2016, p.3, text in brackets added, see also Spieler and colleagues' reasoning in Introduction section).

The dissociative pattern of both Age-and SLCC-effects on semantic vs. standard Stroop interference suggests that (1) an amplitude of response conflict is independent of people's efficiency in suppressing the word-dimension of Stroop words mainly because (2) this suppression is itself unlikely. Indeed, (3) the to-be-ignored information in the Stroop task is never excluded from deeper processing (as suggested by constantly significant semantic Stroop interference, the magnitude of which remained unchanged by Aging and SLCC).

Rather, this to-be-ignored information (4) is more or less efficiently excluded from control over action (as suggested by standard Stroop interference involving the response conflict, the magnitude of which varied as a function of Aging and SLCC). As emphasized by multiplestage models of Stroop interference, (5) the exclusion of to-be-ignored information from deeper processing and its exclusion from control over action constitute two different classes of processes. Historically favored single-stage response accounts -in which the customary implementations of Stroop inference/effect (BLUE green -DEAL green / BLUE blue ) are rooted-are therefore likely to be obsolete. These two classes of processes (6) are likely to be different in nature. Those involved in the control of the irrelevant semantic information over (responserelated) action seem clearly controllable and thus evolve with aging and are permeable to moderators (e.g., SLCC, RSI). Even though we are inclined to conclude that processes involved in the semantic (i.e., conceptual) processing of Stroop words are automatictherefore preserved in healthy aging and not permeable to moderators [START_REF] Augustinova | Automaticity of Word Reading: Evidence from the Semantic Stroop Paradigm[END_REF], this conclusion would still remain unwarranted in light of other related studies (e.g., [START_REF] Labuschagne | Automaticity revisited: When print doesn't activate semantics[END_REF]see Besner et al., 2016 for a review). Thus future research needs to address this issue directly.

Meanwhile, perhaps the most immediate conclusion to be drawn from the present study is that the processes involved in selective attention as well as their modulation by different variables might remain unseen and/or be misinterpreted when observed using the standard Stroop paradigm.

  neutral) × 2 (Coloring: ALCC vs. SLCC) × 2 (Age-Group: younger vs. older adults) design, with the first two factors being used as within-participants factors. There were 30 trials in each condition of these latter factors. The stimuli (presented in lowercase Courier font, size 18, on a black background subtending an average visual angle of 0.9° high × 3.0° wide) consisted of four color words: rouge [red], jaune [yellow], bleu [blue], and vert [green]; four color-associated words: tomate [tomato], maïs [corn], ciel [sky], and salade [salad]; and four color-neutral words: balcon [balcony], robe [dress], pont [bridge] and chien [dog].

(

  1961) classification was used to interpret the ensuing results as representing anecdotal, moderate or strong evidence. Interference-Type × Coloring × Age-Group mixed ANOVA revealed main effects of Interference-Type [F(1,56)=128.01; p<.001, η p ²=.70], Coloring [F(1,56)=29.00; p<.001, η p ²=.34] and Age-Group [F(1,56)=8.46; p<.001, η p ²=.13]. It further revealed a significant Interference-Type × Coloring [F(1,56)=27.25; p<.001, η p ²=.33] interaction and a marginally significant Interference-Type × Age-Group [F(1,56)=3.78; p=.057, η p ²=.06] interaction. The Coloring × Age-Group [F(1,56)=1.85; p=.179, η p ²=.03] and the overall Interference-Type × Coloring × Age-Group interactions were not significant [F(1,56)=.70; p=.407, η p ²=.01].

Table 2

 2 Color-Naming Performance observed a Function of Stimulus-or Interference-Type and ColoringNote. Percentages of interference (controlling for age-related difference in processing speed) were calculated automatically using unrounded RTs, significant at p < .05; ** significant at p < .01

				Coloring
			All Letters Colored		Single Letter Colored
			(ALC)			(SLC)
		M (SE)	CI	%ER	M (SE)	CI	%ER	SLC effect (RT)	SLC effect (ER)
	Standard Incongruent BLUE red	963 (23)	[917, 1010]	3.82	913 (18)	[877, 950]	2.25	-50**	-1.58*
	Color-Associated Incongruent SKY red	866 (18)	[830, 903]	.46	877 (18)	[841, 913]	.65	+11 ns	-.19 ns
	Color-Neutral PUT red	843 (18)	[808, 878]	.19	859 (16)	[827, 892]	.55	+17*	-.36 ns
		M (SE)	CI		M (SE)	CI		SLC effect (% interf)
	% of Standard Stroop Interference	13.99 (1.04)	[11.92, 16.06]	>	6.26 (.62)	[5.01, 7.51]		-7.73**
	% of Semantic Stroop interference	2.83 (.59)	[1.65, 4.02]	≈	2.07 (.71)	[.64, 3.50]		-.77 ns

*

Note that this pattern of ERP results is also consistent with the idea that spatial attention is a necessary preliminary to lexical processing of words (e.g.,Besner et al.,

for a review).

 19.13, 22.72]79.07 6.47


This summer, the Prado Museum in Madrid hosted the exhibition Tesoros de la Hispanic Society of America: Visiones del mundo hispánico. Among the 200 objects on

In the first half of the nineteenth century, when the market for autographs developed and rapidly expanded, the Rubens volume became a prime target for thieves, the most infamous of whom was the Italian count and mathematician Guglielmo Libri. By 1838, at least 26 of Rubens's letters to Dupuy had been removed from the bound collection; 18 more disappeared during the following decade, before the librarians noticed and stopped the bleeding. Many of the purloined manuscripts soon resurfaced in autograph sales in Paris and London, while others were traded privately. A Rubens letter -which is usually dated and signed and beautifully written -became a must-have for the serious collector and fetched ever-rising prices at auction. The Bibliothèque nationale managed to retrieve a few letters, but most of them have been widely and irrevocably dispersed.

  figure of intellectual life in Paris during the first half of the seventeenth century. It is one fragment of an extensive ensemble which counts among the most engrossing correspondences of early modern Europe. From 1626 to 1629, the Flemish artist and the French scholar communicated in Italian on an almost weekly basis, producing a rich epistolary corpus replete with personal, cultural, and political news. Dupuy diligently preserved his friend's letters, which later (in 1754) entered the Bibliothèque du Roi as volume 714 of the massive fonds Dupuy.

  Today, only 33 letters remain in volume 714, barely a third of its original contents. On the other hand, some 30 letters from Rubens to Dupuy can now be found in libraries and museums in 8 countries; another 15 or 20 probably still exist in private collections.Charles Ruelens and Max Rooses, the editors of the monumental Codex DiplomaticusRubenianus (1887Rubenianus ( -1909)), tracked the history of each letter and located a good number of the scattered originals. For her English translation of The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, Ruth Saunders Magurn updated and augmented their list and published 10 letters for the very first time, including 6 addressed to Dupuy. Since then, a few more of the "lost" manuscripts have been identified in previously overlooked locations such as Forlì, Italy, and St. Louis, Missouri.Reassembling the pieces of the Rubens-Dupuy correspondence is surely a never-ending puzzle as more letters continue to come to light, including some whose contents had remained completely unknown. One such unpublished missive is preserved in the autograph collection that Charles Roberts donated to his alma mater Haverford College in 1902. The letter is dated Antwerp, March 11, 1627, and bears a seal and a superscription to "Monsieur du Puy, chez Monsieur le conseiller du Thou, a Paris." Collection, Quaker & Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania The existence of the manuscript was signaled in the Codex Diplomaticus on the basis of an 1875 Sotheby catalogue advertising the sale of the collection of Dr. O'Callaghan, where it was presented as a "splendid specimen of his rare autograph […] very characteristic, referring both to political matters and painting." In fact, painting is not discussed in this letter, which is dominated (like most of the correspondence) by public affairs. Several of its topics continue those of the preceding letter, dated March 4. The King of Spain's announcement that he won't pay back the debts incurred with Genoese bankers causes anxiety in Antwerp and could lead to a global credit crisis ("perche il traffico e concatenato insieme"). The Hollanders seem to be preparing for some military undertaking. Rubens has finally sent off a rare book to Dupuy and apologizes for the high cost of shipping. He did not include prints of the Rhine-Maas Canal because they are worthless and he should soon receive a more accurate depiction. Perhaps the most interesting and revealing parts of the letter, however, concern two unruly clerics imprisoned in the Spanish Netherlands. The first is "il Padre Barnesio," i.e. John Barnes, a Benedictine monk from England and author of an anti-Jesuit Dissertatio contra AEquivocationes. In December 1626, Barnes was arrested in Paris and brought to the prison of Vilvorde near Brussels. Charles Roberts Autograph Collection, Quaker & Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania Rubens informs Dupuy that the duke of Buckingham (favorite of Charles I) asked him to intercede on Barnes's behalf; while he was unable to obtain the monk's liberation from the Infanta Isabella (governor of the Spanish Netherlands), his efforts at least led to better treatment for the prisoner. Archival documents in Paris show that the French were aware of the painter-diplomat's contacts with Buckingham and worried about his role in this affair. Somewhat mysteriously, Rubens hints at the true reasons behind Barnes's arrest: Rubens then moves on to another, less sensitive topic -but before sending off the letter, he returns to Barnes and adds this note in the margin: This contradicts the official version, published in the Mercure françois and repeated in modern accounts, according to which Barnes was arrested at the request of his own congregation. The explanation given by Rubens, pointing to reasons of State rather than intra-Benedictine quarrels, sounds eminently plausible and is consistent with the little that is known about the monk's role at the court of Charles I. At the end of the letter, between the salutation and his signature, Rubens inserts another piece of political news: Charles Roberts Autograph Collection, Quaker & Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pennsylvania

This postscript seems to refer to Georges Le Baillif, who has a small place in the history of New France: in 1620, he sailed as a missionary to Québec in the company of Champlain; the following year, he was chosen by the colony to present a list of grievances to Louis XIII, who apparently knew and respected him. But Le Baillif may have also authored a violent pamphlet, even forged some letters; in any case, he did not return to Québec. According to his biographers, nothing at all is known about the Recollect's life after 1625. Did it end in the dungeons of Vilvorde?

In 1634, in a letter to another of his French scholar-friends, Rubens looked back upon his diplomatic missions: 3 this business matters more to your King of France than to anyone else who personally gave the order for this imprisonment. I think I'm well informed and could tell you many things face to face that I don't dare to put in a letter. all his gravest Guilt consists in some heretical opinions in favor of the King of England against the Priests who are to attend to that Queen [sc. Henrietta Maria of France, wife of Charles I], and in this way he stirred up the differences between the two Crowns of France and England. Jacques Dupuy adds that it is believed that the Recollect will be extradited to France in exchange for the king having allowed the arrest and transfer of Barnes. But if we accept Rubens's explanation, both that you may know all, they then entrusted to me, and to me alone, all the secret affairs of France regarding the flight of the Queen Mother and the Duke of Orléans from the kingdom of France, as well as the permission granted them to seek asylum with us. Thus I could provide an historian with much material, and the pure truth of the case, very different from that which is generally believed. 6 arrests were actually made at the behest and in the interest of Louis XIII (i.e. Richelieu).

For Jacques Dupuy's account of Barnes's arrest, see his Dec 7, 1626 letter to Peiresc (ibid., p. 773-774).


R Toinet

de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

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On the other hand, records of books allegedly from Toinet's collection can be encountered in many other library catalogs in the English-speaking world -apparently due to a widespread practice of borrowing title citations from the Library of Congress and not cleaning up the copy-specific notes. The error persists when these books are made available online (in HathiTrust or the Internet Archive): the records include the note "Ex bibliotheca R. Toinet" but closer examination shows this to be invariably wrong.

No less confusing is the fact that many ex-Toinet books now appear in Gallica, the digital repository of the French National Library. Since 2007, Gallica indeed includes hundreds of titles digitized from the microfilm set French Books 1601-1700 (225 reels produced by General Microfilm Co./OmniSys Corp., Massachusetts), a series that appears to draw heavily from the Toinet collection in the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, nothing in the Gallica records indicates the physical location and characteristics of these microdigitally reproduced books. Whereas the microfilm reels include the original catalog card for each book, all this information has disappeared in the Gallica version, and the only "source" and "provenance" mentioned is "Bibliothèque nationale de France."

Copy-specific information is always helpful, but especially in the case of the Toinet collection, since many of its volumes are not only rare but contain unique features, such as owners' inscriptions or other manuscript additions (not to mention the notes inserted by the collector-bibliographer himself). To present just one example, Toinet's copy of vol. 2 of the Poësies de Madame Deshoulières (1695) ends with a manuscript poem that is also noticeable in the digitized microfilm but best read in the original:


Volker Schröder

Volker Schröder Saving Madame

Simon Gratz

ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

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The 2. The letter is written on a quarto leaf measuring ca. 8.6 x 6.6 inches (21.9 x 16.7 cm). It has a watermark showing the papermaker's initials in a cartouche surrounded by a crown and a bunch of grapes (similar to Gaudriault 433-434, commonly used as countermarks); the initials are difficult to make out but appear to be B (or P) and C (or G). There is no address; the verso is completely blank.

3. English Showalter, Françoise de Graffigny: Her Life and Works, Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004, p. 15.

  address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Email Address Subscribe Anecdota Rare texts and images from early modern France About My dear father, I am forced, in the dire plight where I find myself, to implore you not to abandon me and to have Mr de Rarecour come and get me as quickly as possible, for I am in great danger and am all shattered with blows. I throw myself at your mercy and ask you that this be done very soon. You have to say that others than I informed you, for everyone knows it. I am with much respect your most humble and obedient servant F. d'Haponcour de Grafigny 1 Simon Gratz autograph collection, The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (click for larger view) The rediscovery of this "lost" autograph provides the opportunity for a close-up comparison of an early 18th-century manuscript and its early 19th-century lithographic reproduction. It should even lead to a (tiny) correction of the text of the letter as published in the Correspondance and elsewhere. At the end of the first line, the editors -working from the facsimile and wishing to respect Mme de Graffigny's spellingtranscribe: "je me trouvee," with an odd extra e. The original does not support this reading: Original Facsimile Throughout her life, Mme de Graffigny had a habit of punctuating some of her final e's, apparently by pressing down the quill before lifting it off the paper. At the end of the word "trouue," this dot merges with a brownish blot in the paper, but clearly does not form another letter. The facsimile artist, however, added another curl, which does suggest the presence of a second e. In the future, everyone should feel free to quote Mme de Graffigny's famous inaugural text -"the earliest known piece of writing from her pen" -without this supernumerary and apocryphal e! Seen next to the original, the facsimile as a whole demonstrates rather egregiously the limitations of lithography and its inability to render the particular flow and nuances of early modern handwriting. Closer inspection reveals deviations and distortions affecting almost every single letter. Today, photographic reproductions and digitizations are certainly capable of conveying more faithful impressions -and yet, the original manuscripts continue to be well worth searching for and rescuing. Noël, Une "Primitive" oubliée de l'école des "coeurs sensibles": Madame de Grafigny (1695-1758), Paris: Plon, 1913, p. 22.