Statistical analysis
Statistical analyses were conducted using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 28 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA). Significance was set at 0.05 and the descriptive data were presented as mean and standard deviation (SD) except where stated otherwise. The data were first screened for normal distribution using the Shapiro–Wilk test and visual inspection of histograms.The participants motivation towards the upcoming task (Stroop taskTwo-way (2 × 4) RM-ANOVA was conducted to test the effect of congruency (congruent and incongruent trials) and time (block 1 to block 4) on the reaction time, number of errors and number of missed trials during the Stroop taskBefore interpreting RM ANOVA statistical outcomes, sphericity was verified by Mauchly’s test. When the assumption of sphericity was violated, Greenhouse-Geiser corrected significance values were used. If RM ANOVA showed significant main or interaction effects, the main and simple main effects were further investigated using post-hoc pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni correction.