The Impact of Alcohol on the Stroop Effect

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The Impact of Alcohol on the Stroop Effect Dana Real University of Maryland Global Campus PSYC 300 7381 Research Methods in Psychology Professor Anna Lissitz May 2, 2023

The Impact of Alcohol on the Stroop Effect Abstract The Stroop Effect, devised from J. Ridley Stroop’s research, began as the difficulty one experiences when attempting to name the physical color of a font when it is used to write the name of a different color. It has grown into more in depth research about fundamental cognitive processes since its origins in 1935. This study aims to report the impact of alcohol consumption on the Stroop Effect, hypothesizing that the consumption of alcohol will increase the Stroop Effect. Participants were given the Stroop Test, displayed digitally on a monitor, first in a sober state. Then, via blood alcohol concentration clamp, ethanol alcohol was administered until BAC reached 0.10% and the Stroop Test was given again in the same way. The results support the hypothesis, as it was found that the Stroop Effect increased by, on average, 2.09 seconds after the administration of alcohol. The results of this study are pertinent to public health and safety in the capacity of intoxicated driving. Limitations of this study include subject expectancy effect and the limited population the sample was pulled from. Future research can focus on the effects of varying levels of BAC on the Stroop Effect.

The Impact of Alcohol on the Stroop Effect The Stroop Effect is how processing a particular aspect of a certain stimulus impacts the processing of another, different aspect of the same stimulus (Scarpina & Tagini, 2017). The original study on what has come to be known as the Stroop Effect was published in 1935 by J. Ridley Stroop. Stroop was interested in the interference effect on reading reaction times; the interference being caused by the aforementioned different aspects of the same stimulus (Stroop, 1935). The foundation of Stroop’s study was measuring the time it took participants to read the names of colors printed in black and the time it took for those same participants to read the names of colors written in a different color then the one named (Stroop, 1935). The results of Stroop’s study found that, on average, the participants took 2.3 seconds longer to read the names of the colors printed in a different color then the color named; this means the Stroop Effect was measured to be an average of 2.3 seconds (Stroop, 1935). Although The Stroop Effect phenomenon was coined based off of Stroop’s research, the general idea of interference was studied well before 1935. Bowditch and Warren in 1890, Münsterberg in 1892, Müller and Schumann in 1894, and Hunter and Yarbrough in 1917 are a few that contributed to research on the topic of interference before J. Ridley Stroop. Specifically, Hunter and Yarbrough (1917) found that an existing habit interfered with an attempt at forming a new habit that is opposite of the existing one. With this well-established basis of early research, a large amount of further research has been done on interference, and specifically the Stroop Effect, since 1935. Studies done in the current millennium on the Stroop Effect include the effect of lunch consumption on performance in the Stroop test in high and low sociable individuals (Khanna et al. 2012), gender differences in performance on the Stroop test (Baroun & Alansari, 2006), and

the difference in the Stroop effect between migraine patients and a healthy control group (Su et al., 2021). Research by Riedel et al., published in 2021, was focused on the “acute effects of alcohol on attentional inhibition” (p. 1593). Using an arterial blood alcohol concentration clamp, alcohol was administered to a level of 80 mg%. The results found that participants’ attentional inhibition, which is the ability to suppress interference from distracting stimuli, is not impaired by the alcohol exposure, however there was a general increase in response times (Riedel et al., 2021; Tiego et al., 2018). Furthermore, an additional report focused on the effects of alcohol on interference and reaction times by Devenney et al. in 2019 uses the emotional Stroop test to investigate the impact of a hangover from alcohol on emotional information processing. The emotional Stroop test consisted of physical and social threat words, as well as neutral, or non-threat, words. It was found that the participants’ response times were significantly slower when in a hangover state than in the control state, or non-hangover condition, for all three categories of words (Devenney et al., 2019). Lastly, research performed by John Curtin and Bradley Fairchild in 2003 focused on the traditional Stroop test of colors written in black text and colors written in a different colored text than the named color. The percentage of error in responses increased dramatically when alcohol consumption was introduced, specifically when the color written was incongruent with the color it was written in (Curtin & Fairchild, 2003). Precisely, the percentage of error with no alcohol consumption when the color word is incongruent with the color it was written in is around 4%, while it increases to about 7.5% after alcohol is consumed (Curtin & Fairchild, 2003). Also, participants’ response times, for the same word condition, were impacted by alcohol

consumption, however not at as high of a rate. Without alcohol, response times were about 700ms, and with alcohol consumption, response times increased to about 750ms (Curtin & Fairchild, 2003). These results relate back to the findings of the aforementioned research done by Riedel et al. (2021), especially in relation to response inhibition. Response inhibition is ones’ ability to stop a response. In the Riedel et al. (2021) research, it was suggested that alcohol negatively impacts response inhibition, meaning ones’ ability to stop a response decreases. Therefore, given the increased percent of error when alcohol was consumed in the Curtin & Fairchild (2003) research, it could be concluded that the inability of the intoxicated participant to stop the incorrect response (decreased ability in response inhibition) is the reason for the percentage of error increase reported. This report will present results of a study done on the effect of alcohol intake on participants’ Stroop effect. It is hypothesized that the consumption of alcohol will increase the Stroop effect. Methods Participants The age range of the 150 total participants was from 18 years old to 75 years old. The median age for females was 45, and the median age for males was 42, with an average age of both sexes combined equaling 44. The sampling method used was convenience sampling in the form of a social media ad targeted to people located within a 50-mile radius of central Baltimore County, MD. Once the ad was clicked on, four prompts were presented, including: 1. What is your zip code? 2. Are you willing to travel to a location disclosed once accepted to the study located in the 21152 zip code area? 3. Do you consent to alcohol consumption during this proposed study? And 4. Please provide your email address. If the respondent’s zip code was

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