Ignoring irrelevant stimuli in latent inhibition and Stroop paradigms: The effects of schizotypy and gender

Latent inhibition (LI), poor evidence of learning following preexposure to a task-irrelevant stimulus, reflects the ability to ignore inconsequential events. Stroop interference represents a failure to inhibit processing of a task-irrelevant word when it is incongruent with the required naming of the word's print color. The apparent commonality between the two effects is in contradiction to the literature, which indicates that LI is affected by schizotypy and schizophrenia, and perhaps gender, while Stroop interference generated by the trial-to-trial procedure is unaltered by those variables. In the present experiment, low schizotypal healthy males, but not females, exhibited LI. The same groups did not differ on Stroop interference. The results are discussed in terms of different processing requirements for task-irrelevant stimuli that are an integral part of the task-relevant target stimulus (as in Stroop) or separated from it in space (as in LI).