Experiment On The Effect Of The Stroop Effect

The Stroop effect is demonstrated by the reaction time to determine a color when the color is printed in a different color’s name. Participants respond slower or make more errors when the meaning of the word is incongruent with the color of the word. Despite knowing the meaning of the word, participants showed incapability of ignoring the stimulus attribute. This reflects a clear instance of semantic interference and an unfathomed failure of selective attention (Stroop, 1935).

However, when they conducted their experiments they did not breach any ethical guidelines since they did not exist (Matta, 2014). Hence, to protect the welfare, rights, dignity, and mental health of the participants, strict ethical guidelines were introduced in psychological experiments which have positively influenced the field of psychology. Also, due to ethical frameworks, people are viewed as ‘participants’ of a study instead of ‘subjects’ in an experiment. They also make psychological experiments more reputable, leading to an increase in the willingness of participation by people as their safety is ensured. The increased willingness of participation is beneficial in order to discover more about human behaviour, the effectiveness of treatment, mechanisms of a psychiatric disorder etc.

An interesting challenge arises when a task such as color naming is identified as both controlled and automatic, by varying the other task involved. Color naming is identified as a controlled process when the other task is word reading, but as an automatic process when the other task is shape naming. Cohen, Dunbar and McClelland (1990) proposed an alternative explanation of the Stroop effect, which does not distinguish between automatic and controlled processing. Instead, they proposed that automaticity is a range, and that Stroop interference depends on the relative degree of learning the particular tasks, not on processing speed.

The Stroop effect was tested on four different tasks. Nineteen Queens College students were recruited by flyer, and each were assigned to a word reading task, color reading task, color inhibition task, and word inhibition task. They were timed using a stopwatch function on a cell phone, to name the color, or word to the quickest of their ability. In the order from longest reaction time to shortest: inhibition color naming task, color naming task, inhibition word reading, and word reading. This study shows that people can read words more quickly than they can name colors, and that inhibiting an automatic response to color/word tasks will take longer to do than tasks that do not involve inhibition.

The Stroop experiment by J. Ridley Stroop in 1935 was performed in order to analyze the reaction time of participant’s stimuli and desired results while also obtaining a collective result of color interference and word reading(Stroop, 1935; Lee & Chan, 2000). In the experiment three forms of the test were given, the first consisting of color patches, the second had the color words printed in black and the other was an incongruent test beaming the color did not match the color word

The informed consent were not obtained for the participants to engage in the experiment at their own free will, instead they were deceived and made to belief that they were benefitting, such experiment which has become widely known

The aim of this experiment is to study autonomic processes by replicating the previously carried out Stroop effect by using numbers. A number of 180 random participants aged in between 18-89 were recruited to participate in this experiment. Participants were presented with a stroop experiment task sheet which consists of three parts which was the control, congruent and incongruent conditions. Time was taken and recorded for each participant to say out the number of stars in the control condition and to say out the number of numbers in the congruent and incongruent conditions. Based on the results, participants took a considerably longer time to say the number of number in the incongruent condition than in the congruent condition.

The data collected from this experiment will not contain personal identifiable information. Only the researchers involved with this experiment will have access to the data collected. The paperwork will be stored in a locked file cabinet and the data stored on hard drive on a password protected computer. All information obtained from participants will be kept confidential and protected from unauthorized access. All data sheets will be coded with group labels and numbers. No personal identifying marks of any kind will be present on any of the data forms. The data sheets will be stored separately from the signed consent forms. All data from this study will be reported as group averages. No single identifiable cases will ever be reported.

The main ethical issue with this experiment was the use of deception as the participants did not know the truth behind this study. Participants believe that they were shocking the learners and they were under severe stress due to this is possible that they had suffered psychological injuries. The participants have the right to withdraw from the study if they wanted; however, this was not made clear to them. Also, participants did not receive enough information about the study.

There were a total of 30 participants insisting of 15 females and 15 males who are currently student of LMU, with an age range of 18 – 35 giving the mean age of 22.8. All participants were specifically chosen to be right- handed with English as their first language. It was also vital that the participants had normal or corrected to vision. Each participant was provided with a consent form for his or her acknowledgment of the experiment and was treated in accordance with the ethical principles of the BPS.

Limitations are demand characteristics and that is why we used non-psychology students in order to reduce this variable. The independent variable was the color stimuli. In the control congruent words test, the color stimulus was color words all printed in black. In the incongruent words test the color stimulus was colored words printed in different colors to what they are written as ( Blue written in red ink). The dependent variable was the time it took the participants to name the colors. During the incongruent word test, participants were not allowed to leave any error

In conclusion the experiment was successful since it supported the aim of the experiment and it was consitance ing what Stroop find in his inteference experiment which was that it took longer time for participants to identify the color of the word stimuli since the participants are more familiar with the identification of color boxes and its much more easier than identifying word stimuli since there schemas do not recognize as quickly as it does with just naming colors. However i would do this experiment again but instead i would associate the time it takes identifying colors of boxes and word stimuli if the participant had a 3.5 gpa or avove and the time it took a participant to identify color boxes and the color word stimuli if the participant

With practice a behavior, habit, routine, etc. can at times no longer require direct interaction and have less need for executive control, which cognitive psychologists then consider the action to become automatized. According to Reisberg, automaticity has a downside: Automatic tasks are not governed by the mind’s control mechanisms, with the result that they are not controlled and this can act as if they were “mental reflexes.” (Reisberg, 2016, p.177.) An experiment called the Stroop Effect was created to show how this automaticity can cause negative effects when trying to complete the action. The purpose of this study was to examine the automatizations of the participants that occurred during the Stroop Effect experiment. The Stroop Effect is a task designed to measure conflicts

This science experiment is conducted to perform a controlled experiment to investigate the Stroop Effect. It works because we read words faster than we identify colours. This experiment also compares the time taken to say the colours of words, like the picture on the cover, when the colour doesn’t match the written to when the colour does match the written word.

Based on my experience with the Stroop effect I have concluded the test with the conflicting words and colors showed increased complexity. I realized during the test that the incompatible inputs created conflict in my mind. In order for me to formulate a response I had to disqualify an input and validate the solution prior to the final answer.