Essay on Stroop Effect: Color Wording and Cognitive Interference

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).

The Stroop (1935) effect is the inability to ignore a color word when the task is to report the ink color of that word (i.e., to say "green" to the word RED in green ink). The present study investigated whether object-based processing contributes to the Stroop effect. According to this view, observers are unable to ignore irrelevant features of an attended object (Kahneman & Henik, 1981). In three experiments, participants had to name the color of one of two superimposed rectangles and to ignore words that appeared in the relevant object, in the irrelevant object, or in the background. The words were congruent,

Selective attention is a cognitive process used when reacting to only certain stimuli when multiple occur simultaneously, helping the human brain be productive, focus, and filter out unnecessary information. This phenomenon is explained by the Stroop effect theory. This was studied by Stroop (1935) in the experiment we will be loosely replicating to further increase credibility of the theory. He aimed to explore how cognitive interferences affect the reaction time of a task. In the experiment, participants were asked to to verbally name the color of the ink or the meaning of the word depending on the condition. He began by testing words with congruences, incongruencies, and a neutral control. The congruent words matched the meaning and color, the incongruencies were random and the color did not match meaning, and the neutral control was black ink. By recording the time

It was found that tasks involving colors cause more interference. These two studies were similar to the present experiment, as they both required participants to verbally name colors while inhibiting themselves from naming the typed color, as fast as possible.

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

Some research, though, seems to suggest that the processes behind word identification are not entirely automatic, they are to some extent avoidable. A study carried out by Kahneman and Henik (1979) supported this as they found that interference was greatly decreased when the colour name is in an adjacent location, rather than in the same location as the colour which participants are asked to name. Again though, this reduction in interference is due to the placement of the distracting word, not due to any effort by or ability of the participants.

In 1935 John Ridley Stroop first detailed a phenomenom now known as the “Stroop effect.” This effect has become

Interference is basically looking at the word and seeing both the color and the meaning. It confuses the brain and forces it to make a choice. Experiences and memory have taught people that the meaning of the word is more important than the color of the word. ("Stroop effect - mind games or an illusion?," n.d., p. 04) This is why many people have trouble when the color of the word differs from the color the word names. There’s a theory on interference that focuses on human memory. It says that interference occurs when a person tries to recall information. It also states that learned information conflicts with new information. Interference and the Stroop effect are used to compare brain development in young children, most likely to look for any mental problems or things like that. Interference is also very largely present in condition such as brain damage, ADHD, dementia, alcoholism, and many others. ("Stroop effect - mind games or an illusion?," n.d., p. 04) Selective attention plays a critical role in the brain’s ability to process task-related stuff. The Stroop effect shows a great deal of conflict in the brain between well-leaned behavior, and a decision that requires that behavior to be repressed. The participants need to filter their automatic reading skill in order to name the color of the word. (Leung, Skudlarski, Gatenby, Peterson, & Gore, 2000, p.

about John Ridley, the creator of the stroop effect. How he tested the performance of participants

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

Though the results may vary slightly from the original study, the overall outcome was the same; it took longer for the participants to complete the English color test versus the German color test. We can conclude reading is an automatic process and can interfere with conscious processes. One limitation of our study was the age range. Older people tend to have a more difficult time with their vision thus making it harder to distinguish between the various colors resulting in a longer reaction time. Another limitation is the setting of the test. None of the tests were conducted in a laboratory setting nor by the same person so the results may be skewed. Though the distractor made the test more difficult the overall task could be considered a low load task therefore the participant could have easily been distracted, also resulting in an increased reaction

When performing the stroop task, participants are asked to say the color of a printed word that appears on the screen. We found that participants were slower to respond when the color was incongruent to the word. They began reading the word instead of saying the color (Enetl & Tzelgov, 2016). There was conflict shown in the performing of the task where the relevant task was the color naming and it was contradicted with the irrelevant task of word reading (Enetl & Tzelgov, 2016). An example being that the word could read blue but the color is green, the evoked stimulus is voicing blue because the task is readable (Enetl & Tzelgov, 2016). Incongruent color words cause interference in naming

Cognitive control is a collection of multiple processes, both controlled and automatic, that are utilized to coordinate and adapt behavior in order to meet tasks and situational demands. Controlled processes can be thought of as voluntary processes that require effort, while automatic processes are involuntary and effortless. Automatic processes operate independently from controlled processes in cognitive control. Psychologists have used tasks such as the Stroop task, the Simon task, and the Flanker’s tasks to study cognitive control and the underlying neural networks that comprise the processes [insert citation].

We are replicating J.R. Stroop’s original experiment The Stroop Effect (Stroop, 1935). The aim of the study was to understand how automatic processing interferes with attempts to attend to sensory information. The independent variable of our experiment was the three conditions, the congruent words, the incongruent words, and the colored squares, and the dependent variable was the time that it took participants to state the ink color of the list of words in each condition. We used repeated measures for the experiment in order to avoid influence of extraneous variables. The participants were 16-17 years of age from Garland High School. The participants will be timed on how long it takes them to say the color of the squares and the color of the words. The research was conducted in the Math Studies class. The participants were aged 16-17 and were students at Garland High School. The results showed that participants took the most time with the incongruent words.

Based on the findings that one has discovered in life itself, in essence, color helps with the flows of life in a way that it can determines your thoughts, emotions, and decisions. In my research I gained a vast amount knowledge and from what I’ve learned; now I can explain colors in depth, with a great amount of detail. If colors were non-existent, then, there would be a very grey look upon life. Colors brings forth light, and the light brings forth living. The world displays colors for a reason and it’s very important to life.