Essay on Testing the Theory of Multitasking

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).

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 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 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

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.,

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,

The aim of this experiment was to investigate the effect of conflicting stimuli on a response task (Stroop effect), the results supported that it takes approximately double the time for the participants to perform condition 2 in comparison to condition 1 which indicates that there is a distinction between controlled and automatic processing in the brain. Thus the results support the Stroop experiment. In the Stroop experiment it withstood the idea that we are able to read words faster than naming colors. In relation to this experiment in particular; participants were able to read the words faster than distinguishing the font/style of the text. This is because the mind chooses to receive specific presented stimuli before any other aspects

Would practice effect Stroop interference and if so what would this tell us about the Stroop Effect (MacLeod, 1991)? This question was investigated by having participants learn names of Armenian letters and then read the small English and Armenian letters that were composed to form large English and Armenian letters respectively (McLeod, 1991). The results provided evidence that interference was the same for both English (practiced) and Armenian letters (McLeod, 1991). Why then does automatic reading make one susceptible to the Stroop Effect? A possible explanation is attention. During automatic processing, more attention goes to processing the information in dimension a than in dimension b. Processing and naming ink color requires more attention than reading, and so reading will cause interference because it requires less attention (McLeod,

Introduction The subject of study in this experiment is the Stroop Effect. The Stroop Effect was discovered by John Ridley Stroop, a psychologist in the early twentieth century. The Stroop effect concerns a phenomenon known as cognitive interference, whereby multiple processes occurring in the brain interfere with one another. When one is reading the names of colours which are printed in a different colour than the colour described by the word, one reads more slowly and with less accuracy than when one is reading a list of colour names that are printed in the same colour as that which the word describes.

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.

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.

Stroop’s 1935 study was the first experiment to test the Stroop effect as we know it now. The Stroop task measures the participants’ ability to ignore some parts of the stimuli, either the color of the word or what the word actually reads and pay attention to others. This is especially the case when the stimuli is incongruent, or when color written does not match the color of the font it is written in. The research question that this study seeks to answer is what effect if any does the Stroop Effect have on accuracy, time and confidence levels of participants.