Essay on Testing the Theory of Multitasking

The psychological phenomenon called the Stroop effect was first popularized by John Ridley Stroop’s series of experiments (1935). Stroop investigated the conflicting stimuli of color identification and reading, and whether practice could diminish interference effects. His first experiment compared the speed at which it took participants to read 100 color-words printed in black ink with the same list of words printed in incongruent colors. Stroop found participants took an average 2.3 seconds longer to read black-printed words, which was, “…not reliable, which is in agreement with Peterson’s prediction made when the test was first proposed,” (p. 17). In his second experiment, Stroop compared the speed at which participants identified colored squares with the naming of ink color a color-word was printed

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 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 experiment is a demonstration of reaction time of a task . The Stroop experiment employs two basic processes of cognition; attention (“the concentration of mental effort on sensory or mental events”) and automaticity (“a cognitive process that does not require conscious thought as a result of existing cognitive structures

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 results of the information processing lab support the text in a number of ways. As the number of choices increased, the total response time also increased, verifying Hick’s Law. This then indicates that as the trials became more complex, information processing time was influenced. However, the subjects were able to bypass the complexity of the task when they were able to preview the color or

In Stroop’s (1935) interference article, it was discovered that there is more interference in color naming then color reading. The experiment described in the article tested whether there was more interference from words or from colors (Stroop 1935). Two tests were administered each with a separate control. The RCNd test determined how fast one could read color names where the color was different from the color name while the NCWd test determined how fast one could name colors where the color was different from the word on the page. The mean time for 100 responses increased from 63.3 seconds on the RCNd test to 110.3 seconds on the NCWd test or an

We often tend to live our everyday lives without paying much attention to the factors that contribute to our every movement and function. Have you ever wondered what triggers your brain to complete simple tasks, such as reading road signs, or knowing how to follow a guided set of instructions? John Ridley Stroop became specifically interested in the part of the brain that measures selective attention [1]. Oftentimes, in order to maintain balance, the brain will carry out the action that is most common and easy and will stop the action that will take more work and effort. The process explained in the previous sentence is known as inhibition, and it regularly occurs in our minds [2]. Stroop gave participants a list of colors, such as green,

Early studies have widely researched attention with selective processing (Driver, 2001). Broadbent (1958) filter theory of attention states that certain information does not require focal attention. It is based on certain stimulus attributes such as colour and shape (Friedenberg, 2012). A previous study carried out by Treisman and Schmidt (1982) proposes that when attention is diverted from a display of several figures, the participants incorrectly combine the features of colour and shape therefore increases the illusory conjunctions portrayed by the participants (Tsal, 1989). Another study by Shaw (1978) found that reaction time of participant to identify targets varied with the probability that a target would appear in a particular display location. These results indicate that different amounts of attention towards the targets are distributed to different positions in the visual field. However, Houck and Hoffman (1986) found that the feature integration of colour and orientation can sometimes be accomplished without attention (James et al.,

In the third and final part of his experiment, Stroop (1935) examined how practice could impact reaction times. Over a two week period, participants practiced various tasks which used colored words, names of colors and colored blocks. It was found that practice decreased reaction time when naming ink color when it conflicted with the name of the color (i.e., answering “RED” for BLUE) and that such interference could disappear if newly established (Stroop, 1935). The second discovery during this part of the experiment was that reaction times for reading the name of the color and naming the ink color were almost equal at the end of the practice period (Stroop, 1935). Even though this resulted in a significant increase in reaction time for reading the name of the color (i.e., saying “BLUE” for BLUE), Stroop concluded that this equaling of reaction times signified that the interference between the automated process of reading and the conscious process of naming the ink color could disappear with practice (1935).

This experiment was conducted to see whether a person tend to solve better or worser with words that are colors with chosen color filling. The experiment was done in Foothill High School, with a national and international ethnicity mixture group, and participants were students of this school. The Stroop experiment is a verbal reaction test, to see how well a participant is able to say the color instead of words as fast as they can. As of the observer, they are responsible for timing and accuracy of participants when announcing each words correctly. The obtained result afterward, tend to have a faster pace of people who associate better with the matching word and color. Unlike those who associate with different matching colors of the words,

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.

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.

Multitasking is becoming very significant on the workplace to complete the task in less time. In fact, some people believe that multitasking saves time and can be done at all together. On the other hand, some people think that it is a distracting activity which leads to a lack of concentration. According to David Silverman, “In Defense of Multitasking”, multitasking is “crucial to survival in today’s workplace” (522). However, I do not agree because multitasking reduces productivity, increases stress levels and it is, especially, problematic for students.